


The Virtue to Which We Aspire

by varlovian



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF!Charles, Canon-Typical Violence, Charles-centric, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 66,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varlovian/pseuds/varlovian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine months after Cuba, Charles is found by Erik's Brotherhood in the smoldering ruins of an abandoned CIA base, exhausted but alive. As the only known survivor of the CIA's vendetta against mutants, recovering Charles' memory of the incident—which he admits to having forgotten—just became paramount.</p>
<p>But the harder they push, the closer Charles gets to breaking point. When he finally cracks, the X-Men and the Brotherhood will learn the truth, but it comes with a price...</p>
<p>Some doors, once opened, cannot be closed.</p>
<p>Some minds, once broken, will never be the same again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Library in Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank my brilliant, tireless, long-suffering beta Emma, aka. **fandomlicious** , who sidled into Virtue sometime around the "oh my god what am I doing I can't write something this big" part, and has battled with it to the very end. I'd also like to send all my love and kudos to my gorgeous artist, **yehram** , whose art for this story is absolutely incredible, and can now be found [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/668232).
> 
> Also, **afrocurl** and **chosenfire28** \- thank you both for bearing with me and my terrible slowness, both in writing and posting this story, and for answering some of the sillier questions I've asked over this whole process.
> 
> Note: Although it's set firmly in the XMFC-verse, this story does have elements of a crossover. The only reason it hasn't been tagged is because it runs the risk of spoiling the plot, but I _have_ added a disclaimer at the end of Part 3 for anybody who is interested. No prior knowledge is required and the plot itself is mine.

They found him on the side of the road, a mile and a half away from the smoldering ruins of the CIA facility, bruised and bloodied. They burst forth from black-red tendrils of smoke like leviathans from the sea, equal parts awesome and terrifying, gathering their bearings as he staggered along the wayside. His body stiffened at their approach, bracing for attack, but it never came.

In its place was a whisper, a name. The mouth that spoke it seemed to hesitate in surprise, the word slipping by in a low, quiet rumble, thick with concern. It possessed none of the sharp, barbed edges he had grown accustom to, none of the sour threats or fevered pitch of an argument thrown way out of hand. Instead it was soft, almost reverent.

“Charles?”

He flinched, feet stuttering as the sound opened the floodgates in his mind. His control was shot, decimated, shields lying in tatters at the base of his skull, coalescing in a sharp throb of pain that persisted even as the rest of his body fell numb. The thoughts sliced through the ragged hole in his head, cutting deep, but the importance of putting one foot in front of the other was embedded deeper still. The only thing he had left, the only thing that hadn’t been taken from him, was his resolve to keep moving. He feared what he would become if he lost it; that last, fragile strand of reality was his only tether to the world, his surroundings, _his sanity_. He had to keep going, had to keep pushing. The moment he stopped, it was over. All of it. There was nothing behind him but rubble, the crumbling foundations of his former life...

He had to keep going, he _had_ to, but his breath was coming out in short, sharp pants and the pain in his head intensified with every step. Sunspots danced across his vision as the world unfurled around him in a kaleidoscope of white-silver-blue. He shut his eyes, balled his shaking hands into fists and breathed heavily through his nose. When he opened them again, he saw lights. His throat ran dry at the sensation, at the utter absurdity of this white-grey landscape, endless and unbound. He dug his fingernails into the centre of his palm, biting crescent moons into the skin. It stung—a quick, sharp pulse between heartbeats—but achieved its purpose as the world bled back into focus.

The light gave way to the black of the road and the thick, brown mud caked over his feet. He saw the worn track ahead of him, chasing the highway, and the sun setting low on the horizon. Smoke and ash thickened the air all around him. His breath stuttered to a halt, because there they were. The Brotherhood, marching towards him.

Coming for him.

He stopped walking.

The moment his feet slowed, roiling pain blossomed between his eyes and he knew. This was it. The final step. He was moments away from total collapse, had been skirting the edge of it for days. He didn’t want this to stop, didn’t want the feeling in his legs to ebb away until it was replaced by exactly nothing, didn’t want the emptiness that struck hard and deep, that reminded him how alone he truly was. But it had come.

His legs faltered beneath him, began to buckle, only he didn’t fall. A hand had shot out not a moment too soon, long fingers tightening like bands over his skin. He looked up through the matted strands of hair plastered to his forehead by the sweat on his brow, deathly pale and shaking. Had he any energy left, he would have been stunned at what he found there.

Erik stared at him, eyebrows furrowed, concern etched deep into the lines of his face. His mouth was slightly open, pulled down at the corners, covered in part by Shaw’s helmet, painted in alternate shades of purple and red. He wanted to trace its sharp edges with the pad of his thumb, to worry his fingers underneath the brim and push at it until it was gone, until it came free in his hands and the familiar rumble of Erik’s thoughts lingered heavy in his head. He’d lifted his hand to do so, but aborted the motion. Erik would pull away in anger and disgust, and where would that leave him? Stranded on the roadside, in the dirt, with ash in his hair and the taste of blood, thick and cloying, on his lips.

Alone, like he was before.

In there.

He wrenched his gaze from Erik’s as the world started to spin, transforming everything into a sickening blur of color that refused to stabilize. Erik’s hands fumbled to keep a hold of him, but his legs offered no support as the muscles grew slack and unresponsive. His body seemed determined to drive him to the ground by any means possible, brain unable to compete with the sheer volume of impulses it was receiving. There was the familiar flash-bang of static erupting in his field of vision and the ringing of bells, loud and clanging, in his ears.

“Charles,” Erik’s voice, soft and accented, swept over the panic in his mind like a balm. He closed his eyes, sinking further into the sensation, letting it still his breathing. He was under for what felt like an eternity, a scant few seconds in reality. Erik spoke again as if he had never stopped; his voice was harder this time, urgent. “Charles— _look_ at me.”

He tried to obey him and discovered that he couldn’t. He stared glassily at the ground beneath him instead, static flashing before his eyes, accompanied by a weariness that wore him to the bone. He heard somebody sigh, followed by a pair of leather-clad arms around his waist that lifted him bodily in the air. He was sent crashing back into the broad plateau of Erik’s chest, clipping the side of his head on the helmet.

Pain lanced from the point of impact, cold and sharp. He gasped for the breath that the collision had robbed from him, breathing in until his lungs were fit to burst. The air was tinged with ash and dust, which burnt a path down his throat. Gloved fingers prodded at the back of his head for any sign of an injury and, upon finding none, moved forward to cup his cheek. Erik rubbed circles, small and concentric, into the skin with his thumb, before allowing him to tuck his face into his neck. He inched closer to the heat that Erik seemed to radiate in waves, nose settling at the hinge of his jaw where the warmth was the strongest. Underneath the layer of sweat, copper and grit was a smell that was all Erik. Heady and exotic, he smelt of crushed spice and silver needle, currant and cigarette smoke. It was intoxicating.

Even with the arms holding him tightly, the scent setting his nerve endings alight and the rabbit-fast beating of Erik’s heart in his ear to soothe away the ache of his unresponsive body, he was slipping further away. Erik was speaking, barking out orders, and his voice grew more and more distant with every passing moment. His stomach bottomed out at the same time as his head, oblivion opening its arms to greet him. He tried to fight but couldn’t. He’d done all he could, fought all he could. It wasn’t enough. The sweat-slicked feeling of disorientation and dread had pushed him to his limit. He was done.

“Charles?”

As the darkness reached up to swallow him he had a single, final thought:

_Not Charles. Not anymore._

- 

Charles woke to the sound of voices in the periphery of his thoughts, both silent and spoken.

They were loud, unbearably so—a fact he attributed to the distinct lack of shielding throughout his mind. He couldn’t function in the din, so he set about the exhausting task of first erecting, then strengthening a barrier around him, feeding wave after wave of psionic energy into its construction. It was a delicate procedure, taking the better part of twenty minutes to weave all the way through, and by the time he’d finished he was ready to fall straight back to sleep again.

But the voices spoke softer now, and the minds within his reach where nowhere near as volatile. He allowed only surface thoughts to remain, and chose to single out what people were saying as opposed to what they were thinking.

He nearly gave himself away in surprise when he realized that the conversation being carried out by his bedside was between Raven and Emma Frost. The thick, unyielding void of Erik’s telepath-proof helmet lingered in the doorway as its wearer spoke intermittently to the both of them. He reined in his reaction to their voices, managed to pass by unnoticed to all but Emma, who had clued in long before then.

_‘Just a moment, sugar,’_ came the sickly-sweet drawl of her thoughts projected into his mind, ‘ _the adults are talking.’_

Charles laughed, still a bit stunned by this turn of events.

The sound echoed in the no-man’s land that existed between their thoughts, the only place they felt comfortable speaking to one another: on neutral ground. He didn’t trust Emma Frost any more than she trusted him—which was to say, not at all—but despite their differences and the contrasting ways in which they viewed their mutual gifts, they appeared to share the same self-depreciating humor. He never assumed he was above his fellow mutants, far from it, but the universal distrust in which they approached telepathy regardless of how open they were of other mutations was a quirk that Charles couldn’t help but make fun of. As he called it, there were only two choices in the matter: he could either make fun of it or get incredibly bitter. He chose the former. All conflict aside, he was genuinely pleased to know that Emma felt the same. Bitterness would do them no favors here. Except… the imprint was always there, tucked away in the dustiest corner of the highest shelf of a mind. He saw an echo of that resentment there, and knew without following that she’d discovered the same in him.

(It was buried deep, under layer upon layer of previous experience, reason and analysis that spoke volumes of his acceptance but none of his understanding. How could you understand when somebody rejected such a vital part of you? Could you ever, really?)

‘ _Oh, honey,’_ she projected with a soft tut. ‘ _Such negative thoughts. We’re only the ones our own kind will turn on once the humans are gone.’_

Charles sighed. He didn’t raise the obvious issue—that she was reading his thoughts uninvited—because unlike everybody else, he had already planned for the eventuality. They both had. Anything vital was tucked behind heavily fortified constructs of their own creation. Even earlier, when his shields had been all but obliterated, the lockboxes remained sealed shut, away from prying eyes. Unless Emma Frost was playing on a whole new level of telepathic warfare, nothing was getting past that stronghold. Not on his watch.

‘ _I love that you think that way,’_ she cooed, utterly unrepentant. ‘ _It’s cute. I like the one about me being at a whole new level. Let’s try it out someday. It’ll be fun. Well, I say fun, when I actually mean incredibly unpleasant for you, but you understand.’_

He did.

‘ _I do,’_ he sent, tentatively. He felt her affirmation of the thought, and continued to project. God, but he hadn’t done this in _years,_ and never with another telepath. ‘ _Considering our current circumstances, I’ll have to take a rain check on your... invitation, but you understand.’_

There was a brief flare of amusement. ‘ _Using my own words against me, Professor? I’m impressed.’_ She really, really wasn’t. ‘ _I do like you, though, in the way that only adversaries can pull off without becoming unbearably annoying. So I’m going to give you a warning. In about half a minute, everybody’s going to know you’re awake. Talk soon.’_

The ‘because I’m going to tell them’ went unsaid, but Charles was surprisingly okay with that. He was rather complacent, actually, though it had less to do with her rebuttal and more to do with the fact that while she’d been busy during her perusal of his mind, he’d been conducting an investigation of his own into hers. Namely, her memories on finding him. He had to see what they knew and what they… didn’t.

It was important.

He revisited the Brotherhood’s untimely arrival at the CIA facility, which led them on a trail directly to him. Emma hadn’t been present for that particular mission, but had lifted the thought from someone else’s mind. Azazel’s, Charles presumed, by the soft litany of Russian that made up his thoughts and the way he leaned forward ever so slightly, as if accounting for a third limb of some sort, hovering at the lower back. A tail, he realized, a little awed at the thought. Charles felt the ghost sensation of it waving from side to side, something that both perturbed and utterly captivated him. It held his focus until he realized they were walking forward—towards _him,_ limping slowly along the road. Charles flinched, trying not to spend too long staring at his own self but unable to look away.

To say he looked awful was a vast understatement. He wore a thin, white t-shirt and sweatpants of the same material. Both were positively filthy, suffering minor wear and tear in some places and completely ripped apart in others. Dirt and sweat stained the cloth, along with blood. It was mostly his, he knew, from the various cuts and bruises he had collected on the way out of the facility and not including the deeper, internal scarring he’d received from the battery of tests they’d put him through during his incarceration—which was the nice way of saying that they beat the crap out of you until your mutation manifested, threatening your life, your home, your _family_ if you didn’t grin and bear it. Charles hadn’t broken until much, much later, when there was no one around to hear him beg but the silent rumination of his own thoughts. But the blood, some of it hadn’t been his. Some of it had belonged to—well, other people. He winced within the memory, pushing the notion aside in hope of focusing on the bigger picture, which was how he’d ended up here.

The man in the memory stopped walking all of a sudden, a broken look crossing over his dirt-stained face. Charles bit his lower lip at the mud caked over his feet, the way his legs fell right out underneath him and how Erik propelled his own body to catch him in time. Charles wasn’t sure how he felt about that one, or the breathy sigh that Raven released by his side.

“Charles,” he heard Erik whisper, “ _look at me._ ”

But he didn’t respond, not even when Erik hoisted him up and in, rested his chin atop the filthy, matted strands of hair stuck to Charles’ head. He couldn’t remember what he was thinking at that point, couldn’t remember anything before that, either, besides waking up in his cell like he had every day for the eleven days he’d been there. “Charles?” Erik said his name like it was a question he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the answer to. He looked concerned, face slack in a way that Charles had seen only once before. On the beach in Cuba, after he’d been shot.

_Whatever happened couldn’t have been worse than that_ , he thought, flinching. _Nothing was worse than that._

So why couldn’t he remember?

The Charles in Erik’s arms went still. From her place right next to him—her place next to Azazel—Raven took a hesitant step forward, a look of conflict etched deep into her face. “Magneto.”

Erik’s head snapped up and his shoulders straightened. He gathered Charles’ body in his arms and stood, lifting them both like he weight nothing. A new line of tension appeared down his back and the look in his eyes was cold and calculated. In an instant, he became a whole other person, a complete stranger to Charles. _You must be Magneto,_ he thought with a frown. _I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure._

“Azazel!” Erik barked. Charles felt Azazel’s senses sharpen as he listened intently for his orders. “Take us back, _now_.”

The memory cut off abruptly, wrenching him back into consciousness. He came to in what appeared to be a makeshift hospital bed, thin mattress suspended on a series of metal struts, with a sheet folded neatly under his arms and several pillows framing his head.

Charles stared blearily at the ceiling. His heart pounded in his chest, sweat dampening his brow. His sheets were soggy and uncomfortable. He struggled with them, eventually kicking them off altogether. Then the meaning behind the action caught up to him and he gasped.

His legs. His legs were—

_Oh my god._

His big toe twitched of its own accord. His left foot shifted in time with the sluggish mental command he sent it. He rolled his ankle, rapt by the ripple of motion that followed, and utterly confounded at the same time. He didn’t know how to process this. He didn’t know at all. It felt too good to be true—was it? Was this a fluke, a dream? He shook, suddenly terrified at the thought that this was all in his head, like so many things had been before. How could he trust this? How could he trust _anything_?

“Five minutes. Then you leave him to rest. Do you understand?”

Erik’s voice echoed in the confines of the room. Charles turned his head quick enough to see him disappear through the threshold of the door, leaving Charles alone with—

“Raven?”

Raven glided gracefully into the room. She was in her natural form, rippled and blue and… as naked as the day she was born. Charles averted his eyes immediately, choosing to stare at her face instead. He flinched in the same instant, realizing that she might take offense to the gesture and interpret his brotherly embarrassment as obstinacy or disgust, and resisted the urge to flinch _again_ when he realized in turn that his previous flinch could be equally, if not more, misconstrued.

Charles expected a lot of things to happen then, braced for them even. What he didn’t expect, however, was for Raven’s cheeks to darken as she blushed, a deep smudge of cerulean across her raised skin. Her feet stuttered across the floor on their way to him and she changed directions all of a sudden, walking over to a cupboard near the desk and pulling out what appeared to be an extra hospital gown. She threw it over her head, slipping her arms through the short sleeves, head popping out at the top in a sudden splash of red and blue. She bounced around to allow the fabric to settle, rolling her shoulders until it covered most of her body, and made her way back to him.

“Better?” she asked, looking nervous all of a sudden.

Charles coughed, cleared his throat. He felt overwhelmed. He wondered if he looked it, too, and supposed he did. “Yes, thank you.”

She walked over to the bed neighboring his, sitting in the small space between the wall and the metal handrail. She folded her hands in her lap and watched him carefully. Charles bit his lip. Raven bit hers too. They both drew in a deep breath.

“Charles, I—”

“Raven—”

They stammered to a stop at precisely the same time.

Despite the awkwardness of the conversation, Charles couldn’t help the fond smile that dawned on his face as he was reminded not of the crazy few months which led to their separation, but all the years before. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

Raven glanced up in surprise, a look so fleeting he’d have missed it if he wasn’t staring right at her. She nodded, more for her sake than for his, as if she was affirming something, a private thought perhaps. She sighed, running her fingers through her short crop of bright red hair, tugging at it in frustration. “Okay, I’ve got nothing.”

“I can carry the conversation for the both of us if you’d like?” Charles asked, ribbing her gently. It was an obvious attempt to make her smile, but he’d abandoned all thought of subtlety. Cunning wouldn’t win his battle for him. He had to win it himself.

Her lips twitched, once, and stayed that way. It was barely visible, but there. Charles took it as a victory.

“So,” he began, slowly, in hope of avoiding the same situation as before. “‘Mystique’?”

She nodded.

Charles watched as a transformation took place all on its own, without the influence of her shape-shifting abilities. Her shoulders straightened of their own accord, pushing her up a little higher where she sat. The answer came to him out of the blue. The name Mystique gave her power—power, confidence and a clear distinction between past and present. Charles knew just how important a fresh start could be, a new face for a new world. This was something she clearly felt she needed and while Charles didn’t particularly agree with the manner in which she was establishing that name, it made her happy and that was enough for him.

“It suits you,” he said, attempting to sound nonchalant but failing miserably. “I can’t remember if I ever told you that.”

He felt a bit awkward, saying that. But Raven smiled at him—an honest to god _smile,_ with upturned lips and everything—and Charles would say all the ridiculously tacky things in the world if it meant she’d smile like that more often.

“You didn’t,” she replied, still smiling. “But thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said automatically, voice strained. Then, the words just came tumbling out. “I’ve missed you, you know. I don’t think I know how to function without you, especially not. Not _there._ The house isn’t—it’s big, and quiet, and hard. Without you. It isn’t—isn’t home.”

Her face falling into turmoil, pain etched deep into the furrow of her brow. He’d never meant to upset her, but he didn’t think that was it. His words didn’t cause her sadness, only triggered it. Charles thought he might know where the sadness came from.

Raven, despite her magnificent ability to shape-shift, had never been very adept at change. For the longest time, all they’d had was each other. Losing her was like missing a limb, an ache that persisted long after the shock of his paralysis had faded. He saw her in everything he touched, in every nook and cranny in the house they’d once called home. Losing her was devastating, but Charles was older, hardened. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her, starting out in a new place with no one to talk to but Erik, who wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming of people, through no fault of his own. But she’d persevered, and was stronger for it. It took a strength he wasn’t sure she knew she possessed, but lit her up like a beacon inside, clear as day to anybody who chanced a look at her.

“ _Charles,”_ she breathed on a sob, voice thick with emotion. She looked up, eyes bright with unshed tears, before dropping her face into her hands and sniffling, in an attempt to rein in her feelings. She breathed into her palms for a long moment. Then she raked her fingers through her hair and lifted her head to look at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. Charles ached to hold her, to gather her up in his arms like he had when they were children, to whisper stories in her ear and fairytales in her mind.

“There’s so much I want to tell you, so much I _need_ to tell you, about me and about why I left. I can’t—Charles, I can’t.”

She sounded so lost, so small. Her breath came out in ragged pants, and she pressed a hand feebly over her heart. She calmed down soon after that. It wasn’t a panic attack, not a proper one. He hauled his body over the side of the bed, wincing a little at the pain in his lower body. He might have regained feeling in his legs, but the only thing he felt right now were the shards of agony slicing deep into his back, resonating through the muscles in his legs—muscles that hadn’t been used properly in months. He grimaced, almost losing his balance, but made his way over to her on slow, shaking feet. He looped his arms over her shoulders and felt hers twine around his waist in return. She tucked her head into his neck and breathed him in. He couldn’t have smelt pretty, but she didn’t complain.

He pulled back and her nose wrinkled.

Charles sighed. Well, at least she hadn’t said anything.

She took a step back. He followed her, until she took another.

“Please, just—let me get this out, okay?” Raven pleaded, placing her hands on his shoulders and using them to push him, firm but gently, back onto the bed. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that if you hug me right now.”

Charles could only nod. His throat had run dry. Fear and contentment warred within his gut. They were talking again, actually talking as opposed to arguing, which was all they’d seemed to do in the week leading up to Cuba. But what did she have to say to him? He shuffled back until he felt his head hit the wall and motioned to the empty space at the end of the bed. Raven climbed into it, tucking her knees to her chest and folding her arms on top of them, resting her chin on her forearm and peeking up at him, nervous and uncoordinated.

He fixed her with a weak smile, which drove her to realize that in order for this conversation to take place she actually had to start speaking first. She stumbled a little trying to get there, but Charles was patient and Raven herself was, if nothing else, extremely strong minded.

She opened her mouth to speak, stuttered a few syllables and closed it again. Then she buried her head in the circle of her arms and sighed, loudly. When she lifted her face, her mouth was set and her eyes had hardened in determination.

She looked over to the side and began to speak, slow and steady.

“I was so, so angry at you for living in my head all the time that I never stopped to think that when I told you not to do it anymore you actually _listened_ to me,” she said, voice shaking from the force of it. Charles said nothing, in hope that his silence rang true where his words could not. She needed support, not platitudes, and sometimes the best thing a friend could do was to listen. “I was already so angry at that, and I got even angrier when you didn’t understand, when you weren’t even trying to understand, except that you were. You just,” she motioned to the air, choking back a laugh at the complete spontaneity of the gesture. “Hadn’t gotten your facts straight.

“I loved you so much that your approval meant more to me than it should have. It meant more to me than my own happiness, feeling right in my own skin. I tried so hard to please you, and when that didn’t work, I tried to please society instead.”

Raven paused to take a deep breath, and looked at him for the first time since she’d started to speak. Her eyes remained fixated on his, amber irises reflecting the light above and a fire that burned from within, a fire that was all hers.

Her voice was harder now, battle-ready. “But they’re never going to look at someone like me and see who I really am inside. Not until they get over themselves, and that’s unlikely. Working with Magneto and the Brotherhood feels right in a way sitting at home or going out with friends never could. I’m not that person, Charles. I’m not that blonde little baby doll who’ll sit in a corner all day and be coddled. You knew it too, long before I did. It’s why you were so worried about me all the time, why you told me to be careful. I thought you were ashamed of me, of my appearance, that the blonde little girl I tried so hard to be was all you saw when you looked at me.”

Her face twisted, as if the very thought caused her physical pain to think about. Charles wanted desperately to tell her that that wasn’t what he’d meant at all, but the look on her face told him that she already knew. Surely enough, the first words out of her mouth confirmed it.

“That wasn’t it, though, was it? You knew that life wasn’t for me, that it could never _be_ for me. You looked at the world and all you saw were people that would take me away from you if they knew, that would hurt me in ways that kept you up at night trying desperately to find a way to keep me happy and keep me safe at the same time. But I won’t be safe, not in that life and not in this one. At least here I have a chance to fight on my own terms, for a cause I truly believe in and that I know, deep down, you believe in just as fiercely.”

She was breathing harshly by the end of it, wound tight from her feelings on the subject. Charles felt a similar coil in his heart, a spring just waiting for its catch to be released. Raven smiled at him, then, looking satisfied with what she saw. It was conviction, he realized, the type that lifted you up when nothing else could. The type that let you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what you were doing was right.

“I won’t ask you to join me, Charles, because I know what you’ll say. I’ll respect your decision so long as you respect mine. But I will _never_ stop trying to make you see what I see,” she added, eyes clouding over as if they were glimpsing a possible future where that exact scenario might occur. By the downward turn of her mouth, she didn’t like what she saw. When she returned, however, she slipped straight back in to the righteousness of her tone. “You belong with us, Charles. With me.”

Then she smiled the same, mischievous smile that featured in so many of his warmest, if not troublesome, memories. He was looking at his sister, the rascal, and a stranger, the rebel, all in one. He didn’t know whether to be full of pride or terrified.

“I think it’s time for that hug now,” said Charles, with an eyebrow raised in her direction. There’d be time to talk more about this later, on the things that frightened them, on everything they still had yet to apologize for and to make their amends. Then there was the topic of Erik, of what happened now, of what had happened to him only a few hours prior and haunted him still. But it could wait.

It had to wait.

Raven dived into his arms like she’d never left, slotting her body into every hollow space he had until there was nothing but warmth and scratchy hospital gowns between them. It felt like everything he needed to appease the churning waves of discontent in the back of his head. To assuage the voice that called to him, that screamed his name and reminded him that his part in this was far from over. To soothe the raw nerve that was his fear over the newfound feeling in his legs, an emotion that felt perilously close to hope. Raven calmed the tide, or worried incessantly at it until the waters had no choice but to still under her hand. Holding her felt like peace.

It felt like coming home.

- 

_Bodies litter the gnarled, twisted wreck of the main laboratory building, some half-burnt from the chemical fire that had spread and others in various states of dismemberment and decay. Charles shudders, toes a pair of glasses with his feet. He doesn’t want to know what that is he just stepped in, or the slick of red on his pant leg. All he wants is to go home. Home or somewhere else far, far away._

_But not here. Not ever here._

_Not again._

_There’s someone standing calmly, silently in the haze. He locks eyes with them, watches them watch him. They step forward, features unidentifiable in the smoke, but Charles can sense their thoughts. There’s an overwhelming amount of sincerity, so strong it hurts. Whoever they were—whoever they are—they feel nothing but a passing remorse for these people, for these poor, poor souls._

You mean the poor souls that abducted you, _says a voice in the back of his head._ That _beat_ you. Those poor souls?

_Yes._

_Those poor souls._

_He can’t believe it either. For all intents and purposes, he should be thankful. He’s free to leave, free to carry about his normal life. Except… his life was never going to be normal again, was it? If it ever was. It makes him sadder than he thought he could ever be that his first instinct is to answer that statement with a ‘no’. No, his life is not and has never been normal. He’s a telepath; he was born a freak of nature. He knew when somebody was lying to him, knew their deepest and most intimate thoughts. That one had been the truth._

_He is never normal. Could never be normal._

_Has he even tried?_

_Charles thinks of Oxford, of Raven and of masks. He thinks, after this, that he will need a few masks of his own. For obscurity._

_For protection._

_His mysterious someone takes another step forward, through the smoke, and Charles gets the impression of silver-blue eyes sunken into gaunt, pale skin. There’s not much else after that but darkness, as a large object swings out of nowhere and hits him square in the back of the head. He crumples, looking up at the figure above him with a look of absolute betrayal on his face. Charles’ only thought is that he desperately hopes he didn’t just fall into somebody’s intestines because no. Just no._

_There’s nothing but ash and dust beneath his fingertips, in his mouth when he breathes, blurring his vision when he blinks. All those people, all those thoughts—nothing but a breath,_ his _breath. Perhaps it’s fitting, for what they put him through. Perhaps it’s justice._

_He laughs until he passes out, and laughs still._

-

Charles came to an interminable time later to the feeling of eyes skating across his body, as if committing his features to memory. Raven was curled at his side, face relaxed and sleep-dumb. He turned his head to the door, to see a figure lingering in the threshold there, nearly indistinguishable from the shadows on either side of them. He felt something else there as well, a barrier his telepathy couldn’t penetrate, like a shield of some sorts.

Or a helmet.

Whatever concern he felt drained out of his body in an instant. Charles relaxed, a small smile playing on his lips.

He had no idea what the time was, but the lights were off and his eyelids were already beginning to droop. He saw the figure by the door cock its head to the side, watching him intently. He turned his body into Raven’s and stroked the fine, red hair off her forehead. His visitor kicked off the side of the doorframe, and hesitated.

Charles saw his chance, and took it.

“Goodnight, Erik.”

Erik receded into the hallway without a word, leaving Charles to his sister. Charles shut his eyes, buried his face in his pillow, and fell deep.

He didn’t dream.

- 

When Emma Frost swept into the room wearing a zipped trench coat, heels and very little else, Charles took a moment to mourn the death of practicality. Between Emma’s white wardrobe and the bold ensemble Erik wore—which, minus that ridiculous helmet, actually looked quite dashing—Charles was increasingly surprised by their lack of presence in the newspapers. He supposed Azazel’s teleportation skills were proficient enough that they could escape without being seen, but hiding was never Erik’s forte. Neither, it seemed, was it Emma’s.

Charles opened his mouth to greet her, even as he had little to no idea what he’d actually say. Before he had a chance to speak, however, Raven erupted in a flurry of motion beside him. When Charles looked at her quizzically, she gave him a sheepish grin and shuffled off the bed. Ah, he thought. Somewhere to be, then. It shouldn’t have been surprising, not after everything they’d talked about, but it was. Under his tutelage, he’d gotten used to her bending the rules a little. It was odd, then, to see her bow to authority without question. He watched her carefully for any signs of discontent as she gathered her things and cleared out. He found none.

Raven lingered at the threshold, pebbled blue fingers gripping the doorframe until Charles smiled at her and nodded; a silent confirmation that everything would be all right. She waved at him, cast a quick look at Emma and left.

_‘Be careful, Charles,’_ she projected to him.

Charles felt a rush of warmth at her concern. ‘ _Always.’_

When Raven drifted out of range, Emma turned the full weight of her gaze on Charles. Her eyes bored into him like twin peaks of diamond drilling through his skull, intent on creating a hole in his head so she could reach in and snatch his thoughts at will. Charles—who had been awake for hours just contemplating his situation, and the tangle of memories he had yet to unravel—stared at her patiently. He had nothing to fear from her or her telepathy, not when his strength was returning so quickly, but he heeded Raven’s warning nonetheless.

“I think it’s time we had a little chat, Professor.”

“As do I, Miss Frost,” he replied with an accommodating smile. He’d been expecting this. “Feel free to…”

He trailed off, distracted by a deep feeling of discontent growing low in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t breach Emma’s mind without her realizing, but he could sense her surface thoughts. There would be no context, no link between them, but he was confident enough in his own abilities to try it anyway. Her emotions washed over him, the connection between them distorted but there. Charles felt a surprise that wasn’t his own, followed by a confusion that was equally as foreign.

Then, he felt fear.

There was only a hint of it, in the far recesses of her mind. But it caught like a spark in a dry grass field.

Charles drew back into the relative peace of his own thoughts. If it weren’t for his telepathy, he honestly wouldn’t have noticed. Emma’s face was indecipherable, schooled into a mask of total indifference, as hard as the rock her body crystallized into.

“Not here,” she said impatiently, in response to his invitation. “Magneto is expecting you.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and left with a sharp turn of her heels against the hard floor. Her footsteps echoed down the hall until they faded into silence and for the first time since they rescued him, Charles Xavier was alone.

His first order of business was to gather up every modicum of emotion he felt regarding the sudden and frankly miraculous feeling in his legs and stuff it, forcefully, into a dark corner in the back of his head. There was already too much for him to think about without adding that to the list. Feeling his toes twitch under the blanket was overwhelming enough, not to mention earlier when he actually _stood_ in order to hug Raven. But he’d been exhausted when he’d done that, a natural damper on his reactions. Now he was anything but. Charles’ entire body hummed with energy, radiating it in waves. He wasn’t about to let the residual stress of jumping from one extreme to the other bring him down. He could break down later, after his conversation with Erik if he needed to, away from prying eyes.

Charles kicked off the blankets because he could. He slid from the bed and landed square on his feet to discover that standing so quickly wasn’t such a great idea. His muscles, while receiving their fair share of exercise in the past few days, had barely moved at all in the nine months beforehand. The pain was sharp, intense and absolutely breathtaking. He felt his knees buckle, body pitching forward in an arc—

_Grit. Grit everywhere.  Against his clothes, in his hair, thickening on his tongue. It tastes like death, like burnt flesh and the horrid, overwhelming heat of the open fire as it spreads. He swallows their screams, feels their anguished voices resonate deep in his belly. And it isn’t like death, it_ is _death. Bodies are breaking, fracturing, shattering to pieces all around him. They weep in pools of crimson at his feet, slick against his wriggling toes as he presses forward. The grit is black and grey and blinding. He takes a step but there is no ground to meet him. His foot slips and then he’s falling. Falling, into the sky. Falling, into the black bathed red. Falling, into the wide, open fields. Falling…_

In the final instant before collision, his arm shot out to grip the metal railing on the bed.

Charles froze as his vision doubled. The memory burned fresh in his mind, a translucent film over everything he saw. The ground beneath him rose up to consume him whole but he chased away the sensation with a jerk of his head. It wasn’t time to face those demons yet.

He shut his eyes and called upon the well of calm that existed within. The knowledge he had of his body’s energies allowed him to slip into a deeper state of being, to find his centre and let that control translate into his movements. He took a deep breath and the tremors subsided. A restless, giddy feeling rose in their place. He wanted to stand, to walk, to jump, to run. He wanted to do all those things, all the time, and the best part about it was...

He could.

Charles made the walk to the other side of the room with short, tentative steps. He reached the desk, where a small pile of neatly pressed clothes was set out for him. He ran a finger down the familiar black turtleneck and smiled.

“Thank you, Erik,” he said to the open air around him.

The idea of familiarity, of home, made him think of New York and the team he’d left behind. Charles made a promise to get into contact with them as soon as possible, after his meeting. He didn’t know if the Brotherhood would condone him bringing in the X-Men, but if they wanted to work with him he’d accept nothing but a full, collaborative effort. He was nobody’s prisoner, not anymore.

Charles slipped out of his clothes, showered in the adjoining bathroom and towelled his body dry almost mechanically. His hands trembled as the soft fabric of the turtleneck rubbed gently over his face. Erik’s scent was thick and unyielding all around him. Charles inhaled deeply and felt his breath catch. It took him a few extra seconds to pull on the shirt and fold over the collar, but they were seconds well spent.

Charles stepped into the hall, eyed the nondescript cut of the walls before him. He cleared the threshold of the door and stopped in his tracks when he realized he had no idea where he needed to be. Emma might have forgotten, or left without telling him out of spite, and Raven hadn’t revealed anything about where they were staying. Charles shut his eyes and withdrew to the solid line of tranquillity in his chest, hands resting on the wall at either side of him for stability. He focused inwards, on his own mind, and unravelled his senses like a tightly-rolled sheet.

His awareness extended slowly throughout the hall, filling every inch of empty space with its weight. He cast out in all directions—past the stone and metal construct, through the walls and into the heart of the complex. He found Raven immediately, tag-teaming with Azazel against Angel and Riptide, thoughts stretched taunt over the flurry of punches, kicks and sweeps she was executing while simultaneously keeping an eye on her defence. Charles passed her by, surprised but pleased by the progress she was making.

He found his anchor in a room hidden deep within the compound, where the multi-faceted surface of Emma’s diamond mind gleamed brightly at him. She didn’t say or do anything, but she didn’t need to. He had found her.

Charles made his way around the outer rim of the base in double time, heading towards her. He followed the cues from his own brain—arrows and lights leading him deep into the complex, disappearing around sharp bends and narrow corridors.

It felt utterly bizarre, being on his feet again, and it certainly wasn’t perfect. He ached in strange places, places that had never so much as cramped before, but a little pain was well worth the reward. He could walk again. It felt like a dream and, for a terrifying instant, Charles entertained the possibility that it was.

His feet slowed to a stop at the thought. He shook his head to purge it but it clung on, resilient.

No, this was real. This _had_ to be real.

He pressed his fingers to his temples and focused every ounce of willpower he had on forcing the room to shift, to draw away from whatever fabrication his mind had concocted. Nothing happened. He pushed harder, searching for something—anything—that might lend to the theory that this was a fantasy, an unreality of some sort. His heart stuttered in his chest, beating faster and faster. Blood pulsed through his veins, rushing. Heat flooded his cheeks, face red and hot, and his breath echoed in short, sharp pants—

“I don’t understand.”

Charles blinked back to reality to find his nails cutting into the side of his head. He pried them off, winced at the sudden sting.

That voice brought him back. _Erik’s_ voice brought him back. But it wasn’t what caught his attention, not for long. Charles didn’t just hear Erik speaking—he heard him thinking as well. Erik’s thoughts, Erik’s mind, open for the world to hear. For _him_ to hear.

It was in that moment that Charles knew without any doubt that everything he’d experienced was real. The base, his escape, the feeling in his legs—they were no dream. These walls, sculpted out of metal by Erik, were solid. They were real, they had to be, because there was no way that Charles’ subconscious could ever imitate the impression that Erik Lensherr’s mind left on him. It was like a vicious cyclone of shrapnel and heat, roiling waves of bronze and silver.

Charles shut his eyes, resting in the space between his thoughts and Erik’s for a single, perfect instant. Nothing could recreate the absolute passion that drove Erik’s every move, the conviction and the drive. There was anger, yes, but it was far from the directionless rage it had been when they’d first met. He had honed it, tapered to a point that drove at its target with single-minded determination.

He stepped forward, towards the door. He was about to enter when another voice spoke.

“I was trained to rip through any line of defense, but my specialty was enemy telepaths. So believe me when I say that nobody—not even your precious Xavier—can shield that well. Not against another telepath, and certainly not against me. I’ve never seen anything like it and believe me, dear, I’ve seen it all.”

Emma paused, as if contemplating her next words very carefully.

“There’s something he’s not telling us and you need to find out what.”

She broadcasted her irritation in waves. If the vague sense of discomfort in Erik’s fire-bright mind was any indication, he wasn’t the only one experiencing the backlash. Lingering underneath the frustration she wore was the cold, hard fear he read off her earlier. He didn’t like the picture forming in his head. From what he understood, Emma was afraid. Of _him_.

Erik echoed Charles’ incredulity, albeit for different reasons. “ _I_ need to find out?”

Charles knew without looking that Erik was staring at Emma with eyes full of flint, jagged and hard. Emma, on the other hand, seemed driven enough by her own concern that she ignored the threat laced venomously in Erik’s voice. Ignored it, or missed it entirely. Charles wasn’t sure which idea scared him more—that she was so flippantly playing him, or that she was close to stumbling neck-deep in his anger.

“I told you,” Emma said, impatiently. “I can’t read him. You know him personally.”

Erik’s answering grunt was barely audible, backed up by a flare of annoyance at Emma and something else, something warm, when he thought of Charles. Charles longed to press himself against the barrier between them, to blur the lines until neither of them could tell where he ended and where Erik began. It was a dangerous thought, toxic, and Charles shuddered. He refused to see any benefit in that monstrosity of a helmet, but it was so much easier to _think_ when Erik had it on.

“We need that information,” Emma pressed. Charles figured she was either very suicidal, or very desperate. Possibly both.

Erik’s next words came out low and rough, verging on a growl.

“I know.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked, sounding flippant. If Charles didn’t know better, he’d be worried for her, but he did know better. Emma was baiting Erik on purpose, to get him to bend. He hoped for all their sake’s that Erik didn’t decide to break instead.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Erik hissed, sounding livid.

Emma scoffed and it was a testament to her ability that even that sounded ladylike. Her words, on the other hand, were anything but cordial.

“You’re joking, right?” she asked Erik, allowing the full weight of her incredulity to settle in before continuing. “I’ve seen the way you look at him when you think he can’t see you. Does he know you were watching over him last night?”

Charles started. So it hadn’t been a dream. He recalled a stream of semi-conscious thought, interlaced with the thick, heavy fog of sleep, and a shadow settled heavily in the doorframe. He’d suspected it was Erik, had called to him, even. But now that it was confirmed, Charles couldn’t stop the warmth that smoothed over his mind, or the tiny flicker of hope that ignited at the silence that followed.

The flicker of hope was pushed to the side all of a sudden by a rising sense of panic and dread as the hurricane of Erik’s thoughts darkened in outrage. It splintered and broke. The fragmented glass and metal of his mind contracted to a razor-sharp point. It felt like time had stopped as the shards hung suspended in midair, the full force of Erik’s frustration channeled into a psionic burst ready to strike. Charles had always suspected that Erik’s mutation might one day expand to include psychic attacks as well, but he never expected to see something so refined so quickly. Charles tucked the observation away, a loose sheet in the thick tome that was his friendship with Erik.

Charles entered the room without further delay, before Erik did something they would probably all regret. He didn’t think the other man was even conscious of the energy building within him, or what it might do to his mind if he was allowed to continue. He positioned himself at the edge of their vision. His eyes flickered between them, and Charles pursed his lips. “Am I interrupting something?”

Erik scanned Charles’ face warily. His gaze softened as he took in the black turtleneck he was wearing, the sleeves a touch too large for his frame and the waistline tight and constricting. Charles was willing to wager, however, that the shirt would fit Erik perfectly. The slacks he’d pulled on afterwards fit just right, as did the pair of boots that accompanied the ensemble, brown leather cracked and faded with age.

“No,” Erik said, once he was looking at Charles’ face again.

Emma turned to face them both, hands on her hips. “Yes.”

Charles stepped past them and took stock of his surroundings for the first time since he’d entered the room.

The base cut into the heart of a rock formation. The walls were rough and textured but weathered in a way that alluded to the use of technology—or, in the Brotherhood’s case, a mutant. Charles’ vote was on Riptide’s ability to create whirlwinds. With the right support from Erik’s magnetism manipulation and Emma’s diamond form, it was a definite possibility. The corridors were reminiscent of old sandstone tunneling, only wider and with a darker rock. Everything else was metal, from the plating on the walls that concealed the base’s wiring, to the vents that pumped oxygen through the compound.

The room they were standing in was empty apart from a large oak table and several chairs that littered the area. The ceiling was raised, cut high above their heads, and the only part of the room that hadn’t been rubbed back yet. Stalactites hung suspended from the very top of it; like the bared teeth of a rabid dog, dangerous and sharp. Erik stood in front of the colossal table, Emma by his side. They watched him carefully, with twin looks of stony consideration. Charles cut to the chase, embarrassed by his distraction.

“You tried to read my mind?” he asked Emma, who nodded.

Her gaze was sharp with silent accusation. Erik’s eyes danced between the two telepaths, from Emma to Charles and back again.

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” he replied. It was the truth. He hadn’t done anything, at least not intentionally. Emma didn’t respond, but Charles hadn’t expected her to. He didn’t much care for her accusations. He wasn’t shielding. If anything, his defense was sorely lacking.

He carded his fingers through his hair, considering, when he saw something on the very edge of his vision.

Charles locked eyes with Erik, who watched him unabashed. He reacted without an ounce of humility at being caught. His lips twitched when Charles found his gaze and held it. Charles knew he shouldn’t trust the glint in Erik’s eye but he did; it was exactly how Erik used to look at him before, in Westchester, over chess and a bottle of scotch. His entire body ached for it, for that camaraderie and friendship, for a time that existed free of lines and boundaries, of restrictions and lies. He ached for Erik, in old ways and new.

“I’ve been working on my shields since I woke up here, but I didn’t get very far. They’re nowhere near as effective as they were in Russia, where I know Miss Frost had no trouble finding me, but…”

He trailed off as an idea sparked in his head.

“Try again,” he ordered. Emma stared at him with an air of total disbelief.

Charles sighed. “I’m serious. I didn’t consciously choose this. If there’s something wrong, I’d like to find out what.”

She looked to Erik for permission, who nodded.

They stepped forward at the same time. Emma curled the fur collar of her coat over her shoulder and placed her hands on either side of his head. Her middle and index fingers slotted comfortably over his temples.

The world faded into static around them, and when Charles turned aside his gaze, it was to the warmth and familiarity of his own mind. The repository of all his knowledge stretched out in front of him, in front of them both. He drew away from Emma, further into the room where hard-back books lined the shelves. Designed from his library in Westchester, a haven for both himself and Raven as children, it was simultaneously one of the happiest and saddest places he’d ever known.

Emma made a startled sound behind him, enough to snap Charles out of the trance he was in. He turned to ask after her, but met only air.

She was gone.

Charles opened his eyes, back to the room and his audience.

“What is it?” he asked urgently, searching Emma’s drawn features for any sign of pain or stress.

“I don’t know,” she replied, withdrawing her hands from his head. Apart from her shallow breathing and the slight widening of her eyes, she showed no indication of being affected. She faced Erik, her body straightening. Her voice retook the hard, impenetrable tone it had earlier.

“Whatever it is, it only seems to lock me out when I’m not in contact with Xavier. The moment he pulled away from my presence in his mind, it shut down all around me. I wasn’t there long enough to find out who—or what—was behind it, though.”

Charles opened his mouth to suggest they try again, both intrigued and troubled by her observations, but Erik held up a hand to silence him. They both knew how eager Charles was to investigate every facet of his ability. Erik didn’t smile, but his eyes glittered with amusement when they met his.

“Later,” said Erik in all seriousness. One side of his mouth twitched. “We have more important things to deal with right now.”

Charles nodded, pursing his lips. “Of course.”

Emma continued to watch him closely, but he supposed it couldn’t be helped. He was impervious to her telepathy, something that he hadn’t yet processed let alone understood. Charles knew that if he were in her position, he wouldn’t have trusted himself either.

Charles walked over to where Erik rested against the edge of the table and dropped into the seat beside him. He crossed his legs, hands folded neatly in his lap.

“I know you must have questions, so…” he trailed off. He didn’t know how—or where—to begin.

He needn’t have worried. Erik was quick to pick up where he left off, drawing away from the table to pace in front of him.

“Do you remember what happened, when we found you?” he asked, stopping to fix Charles with a heavy stare.

He drew in a deep breath. “No, I don’t. I…” Charles shut his eyes, clenched his hands into fists and tried as hard as possible to recall something— _anything_ —that might help. From his own eyes, at least. Azazel’s memory was clear and bright in his mind. The rest of it was a fleeting impression, light and sound with no context, no thought. “I remember putting one foot in front of the other, focusing on nothing but the ground beneath my feet. I could smell smoke, so thick it made me cough, but in the next moment it was gone.”

“So you blacked out?”

He nodded. “I think so, yes.”

Charles exchanged a look with Emma. From the corner of his eye, he saw Erik frown.

“I can tell from the expression on both your faces that this isn’t a good thing,” he stated, looking back and forth between the two of them. He settled on Emma, body turning to where she had sidled up to the wall, withdrawing herself from the conversation so that she could observe it properly, impartially. She wasn’t observing the conversation, however, she was observing _him._

“Tell me,” Erik demanded.

Emma sighed, eyes remote as she determined how, exactly, she should go about doing that.

“In my experience, the only way a telepath forgets anything is if they choose to erase it themselves or if something—or some _one_ —has erased it for them. And since the only two telepaths in range are sitting in this room...”

Charles cleared his throat. “What Miss Frost is implying is that because she didn’t tamper with my mind, _I_ must have.”

Erik stared at him in complete incomprehension.

“Why would you do that?” he asked, incredulously. “Why would anybody do that?”

“Haven’t you ever experienced something you wished you could forget?” Charles answered him philosophically.

A storm gathered force in Erik’s cobalt eyes as he met Charles’ gaze and held it. He spoke with an air of finality.

“Never.”

Charles took in the downward slant of Erik’s eyebrows, the turn of his mouth that reflected confusion, anger and no small amount of pain. Emma was a silent witness from her alcove, diverting her attention between their conversation and her nails, the latter of which appeared more enthralling. Charles’ interest started and finished with Erik.

Erik’s features steeled into a stony mask as they continued to watch one another. His thoughts, the details of which Charles was not privy to, were racing a mile a minute, at staggering speeds. Another tense second passed, and Erik looked away.

Charles’ fingers twitched. He had to resist the urge to place them to his temple and _make_ Erik look at him again. He swallowed, feeling nausea rise to the pit of his stomach. The impulse was strong, almost blinding.

“So, what about before the facility was destroyed?” Emma asked with total indifference. “Do you remember anything then?”

He felt a lead weight settle itself at the pit of his stomach. “I…”

He tried to speak but couldn’t. How could he? There was no way he’d be able to tell them the truth, not in any way they’d understand it. He’d made a promise, one he intended to keep. People’s lives could be depending on him, on what he knew.

Him. Charles Xavier.

_Not_ the Brotherhood. Their involvement could only end badly.

When Charles next took stock of his surroundings, he was being watched by not one, but two pairs of eyes. Emma stood stationary, but Erik had continued to pace in quick, short bursts. At the end of every turn, his eyes would settle on Charles.

He clenched his fingers tightly in his lap, hands balling in to fists. In the end, however, he sighed. His voice, when he spoke, sounded as weary as he felt. “I… I don’t know, I told you. I can’t remember—”

“You’re lying.” Emma rejoined immediately, examining the cuticle on her right index finger with disdain. Charles gave her a sidelong glance, to which she shrugged and said, “Even if I could read your mind, sugar, I wouldn’t need to. Your voice says it all.”

“I’m not lying,” Charles said crossly. “I genuinely cannot remember—”

Erik paused in his pacing.

“You’re protecting somebody,” he stated, almost in awe of this realisation. “Who is it?”

Charles scoffed. He knew it wasn’t polite, wasn’t the done thing, but he reached the end of his tether and something had to give. Since that something wasn’t Charles, it had to be Erik and Emma. Having accusations thrown into one’s face was headache-inducing and hurtful, regardless of whether they were true or not.

“If I was indeed ‘protecting somebody’ as you say, why on god’s green earth would I tell you who they are?”

Erik slammed his hand down on the table—hard. The sound echoed across the room with a loud, resounding _clang._

“DAMN IT, CHARLES!” Erik roared, voice blazing with fury. “While we sit here arguing semantics, the CIA is out there ripping mutants away from their lives for no other reason than that they were born! They could be injured, or dying. The government could be _torturing them,_ right at this moment, beating them until they submit. If a single one of them dies because of what you know then it’s on your head Charles. _Your head._ ”

Erik’s hand clamped down on him as he spoke, drawing Charles bodily towards him. Charles flinched violently as pain rippled through him, from the place where Erik’s fingers tightened around his wrist. He gasped for breath, pushing at Erik’s shoulder ineffectually with his other hand. Erik froze at Charles’ attempt to break free and released him in an instant, staggering back with widening eyes.

Charles studied his feet like they were the most important thing in the world to him.

“Charles,” Erik rasped, sounding as if all the air had fled his lungs. It wasn’t out of anger this time, he knew, but something stronger. Erik sounded desperate. He sounded afraid. “Did they—?”

He cut himself off. Charles’ head snapped up to meet his gaze, the color draining out of his cheeks at what he saw. Erik’s expression was one of helpless pain, something Charles mirrored on his own face as he looked away. He swallowed.

“No.  No. They didn’t.”

His voice caught, and Charles shut his eyes. He didn’t look at Erik. He couldn’t. His fingers twitched. He ran them over his wrist, over the raised skin there, trying as hard as he could not to slip straight back into the memories, the dreams.

“Not that this isn’t deliciously tragic to watch, but we have a job to do,” Emma snapped, reaching the end of her patience. She pushed off the wall she was leaning on and sauntering towards them with quick, graceful steps. “Tell us, if you can, Professor… did someone help you escape?”

“Emma,” growled Erik, in a warning tone.

“What? I’m not the one who just accosted him,” she retorted, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow in his direction.

“This is ridiculous,” Charles interjected, lifting his hands towards the both of them. Erik’s eyes lingered on Charles’ wrist, covered by the fabric of his long-sleeved shirt. The pained look was back, causing Charles to sigh. “Erik didn’t do anything. I’m _fine._ ”

Emma rolled her eyes, long past caring.

“Just answer the question,” she drawled, looking almost bored. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek when she blinked, casting a shadow across her skin. Charles had noticed she blinked often, almost as if she did it with the hope that the next time she opened her eyes she would be somewhere different. Or in the same place, with less stupid people.

He lowered his hands, walked over to a chair and sat down. His legs were beginning to ache under the strain of standing. It felt fantastic, but he didn’t want to overdo it. Having the reinforced metal at his back grounded him. He crossed his legs and leaned into it, allowing it to support his weight. Erik took a seat opposite him, and Emma positioned herself on the very edge of one at his side, clear in her allegiance.

Charles looked at the two of them, then at his hands, and then away into the distance.

“Yes,” he said, breathing out in a rush. When he received two expectant stares for his trouble, he elaborated. “Yes, someone helped me escape. The same someone who was responsible for the destruction of the CIA complex and the four-hundred or so people trapped inside of it, or so I’m told. Before you ask— no, I don’t know where they are.”

Emma made an amused sound in the back of her throat. Charles resisted the urge to sigh, but only just.

To Erik, he said earnestly: “I will help all I can, but I barely remember anything so I don’t know what good it will be. Everything happened so quickly, I was just… I was still struggling to catch up.”

Emma crossed her arms over her chest, unimpressed.

“Is there anything else?” Erik asked, gruff and distant. The change startled him. Erik was closing the discussion with a detachedness that was almost clinical. Charles allowed his confusion to show on his face, but Erik wouldn’t look at him. His grey eyes were hard and indecipherable. What Charles wanted more than anything was to reach out and touch Erik’s mind like he used to, a show of kinship and concern. But the gesture wasn’t welcome now. Even without his helmet, Erik’s mind was sealed off to him. It hurt, more than any phantom pain ever could.

“I tried my hardest,” he began, “to burn everything I saw into my memory. I catalogued as much as possible in hope I’d find a loophole, something they’d missed, an opportunity to escape or at least be outside long enough to send a message.”

Erik’s eyes darted to his with a renewed spark of interest. He leaned in and motioned with one hand for Charles to continue. “And?”

Charles met his gaze and held it. Then he said, simply: “I discovered something. The CIA’s dirty little secret, if you will. Only…”

He breathed in, deeply, allowing the air to settle in his lungs. He opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them, and breathed out. Erik’s elbows were on the table, body craned over them. Emma, on the other hand, had settled back into her chair and was studying him with cold, grey eyes. He watched them watch him and laughed. It was a short, confused sound, like he had no idea what he was doing. He really, really didn’t. This was toeing the very line he had hoped to avoid altogether. He only hoped it wasn’t too late to play damage control later on.

“Only what, Charles?” Erik pressed, softly.

Charles’ eyes flitted away, focusing on the smooth, rounded edges of the table before him. He pressed his fingers to the corner of it, thumb rubbing circles along its peak, the metal warming under his fingertips. When he spoke, it was to the tabletop.

“Only, I don’t know _what_ I saw.”


	2. Inkstrewn

Charles stared at the man in the mirror. His wide, blue eyes were tinged with red. Dark smudges marked the skin underneath. His hair was disheveled and stuck to his clammy skin in tacky clumps. It was sticky and unpleasant and a perfect metaphor for his entire life at that point. He felt like he was going to explode out of his skin at any given moment, in a whirlwind of color and carnage. He felt disorganized and wrong.

He anchored his hands on either side of the basin, fingers splayed wide across the cool, metal surface. He drummed them against the sink with the hope it would satisfy the itch that tugged deep in his belly and ran like spider’s legs down his back, but it didn’t help. It didn’t help at all.

Charles watched his hands flex and relax. He marveled at the body’s capacity to move. He catalogued his fingers, studying the tips, the nails, the cuticles. He gauged their sensitivity against other objects, the range of motion that each muscle had and the limitations therein. Everything else drifted into nothingness, his body a place of peace and silence, until the moment that he lifted his head to see—

_Deranged. Possessed. Strong, wild, and utterly untamed. He thinks of words to describe it, the way its fanged mouth opens wide as its jaw unhinges to reveal row upon row of sharp, jagged teeth. It has him backed into a corner, delirious and drug-shaken, infected by the same, deliberated poison that severs them both from the only world they know, the world they have loved and lost and could stand to lose all over again if he doesn’t focus. Focus. What does that word even mean in this context? What could he possibly do, even if he did focus? There is nothing he has that can stop the animalistic surge of the mutant before him, the sardonic twist of her lips and the flicker of a forked tongue behind those terrifying, glorious teeth. Her eyes are dull and lifeless, like she’s been burned out of her mind completely. It is too close to the truth, and he feels bile rising to his throat at the very thought, the idea. They burned her._

_Burned her, and rebuilt something in her place. Burned, burnt, burning—_

Charles froze at the sound of collision. The mirror shattered under the weight of his fist, delivered straight into the very heart of it. The first thing he saw in his return to reality was his own, ravaged skin. Blood dribbled from the open cuts over his knuckles. He ran his uninjured hand over them and flinched. The skin was tender, raw and weeping. There would be bruising.

Loose pieces of glass clattered into the sink. They caught the light overhead, drawing his eye. When he squared his gaze to stare at what was left of the mirror itself, he fell back in complete shock. The person in the mirror wasn’t him. Eyes sunken into a haggard, gaunt face stared back at him in solemnity. Charles reached out to run his fingers over the cracks where the jaw began, but the moment his skin touched the line, the face vanished and Charles was left to stare at his own blank expression. It didn’t quite capture his confusion he felt, the failure to understand.

It didn’t capture anything at all, really. He felt like an empty vessel, open and wanting.

Charles curled his fingers into his chest and hissed in pain when the broken skin protested. It stung in an acute beat under layers of bone and sinew. He couldn’t shake it. The ache clung to him like a shadow and followed his every move.

He willed it to disappear, or to lessen. It did neither. If anything, it intensified.

“Charles?”

His head shot up at the sound of his name whispered so softly, as if the speaker was afraid to jostle him. It was both touching and disconcerting. He wasn’t a child to be coddled, or a wounded animal. Platitudes and a steady hand would do nothing to help him.

Erik stepped tentatively into the room. His eyes flickered from the cracked mirror to the blood on the basin. Charles knew the instant Erik saw him standing there, hand balled tightly against his chest, because his entire body stiffened in surprise. There was no way to hide what had happened; his fingers were stained with red. The last thing he felt like doing was answering Erik’s questions—or anybody’s, for that matter—but resigned himself to the fact that he would probably have to. Only Erik didn’t ask him anything. He didn’t even speak.

The room fell into silence. It settled over him like a blanket, skin-tight and suffocating. Charles fixed his eyes to the floor and studied the pattern of the tile beneath his feet. He felt the heat in Erik’s gaze burn a path down his body, centered on the blood that beaded on his wrist like a macabre bracelet. When no response was forthcoming, he swallowed his pride and admitted, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Then don’t tell me anything.”

Charles jerked his head up in surprise and nearly startled out of his skin. Erik’s face was a scant few inches away from his, a hair’s breadth between them. He’d never been so close to him without being under some form of duress. It was odd. From his vantage point, Charles could see every crease on Erik’s otherwise unblemished skin, could count every eyelash that cast a shadow over his cheekbones whenever he blinked. What unnerved him the most wasn’t how close they were or how thick the tension was, but the sudden impulse he had to reach out and touch, just once. He wondered if Erik would let him explore the blunt curve of his brow with his fingertips and decided that he probably would.

The very idea sent his heart rate skyrocketing. His fingers twitched.

A wave of dizziness crested over him and drove him, unbidden, into Erik’s space. His head fell heavily onto the other man’s shoulder, breath caught on the exhale. He released it in a rush, a deep sigh into the tantalizing heat of Erik’s skin. They were so close now.

Erik’s hands curled around his biceps, his grip careful but firm. By the time his mind was operational again, Erik’s body adhered to his. Charles wound his arms around Erik’s midsection and pillowed his head in the juncture between his shoulder and neck. He collapsed into the embrace, boneless, and couldn’t decide if the distinct lack of surprise he felt at how easy it was to relax around Erik was, in itself, surprising or if it was something he had known all along. Erik buried his nose in Charles’ hair, breathed in his scent and his lungs heaved where they were plastered together, chest-to-chest. His fingers played up Erik’s back until he flattened his palm between his shoulder blades, eliciting a soft sigh from the other man. When Erik eventually tried to pull away, Charles’ hand held him firmly in place.

“Charles,” Erik murmured into his ear, a warning. Charles withdrew his hand reluctantly and resisted the urge to sulk about it. It was unbecoming. Erik settled back on his heels and watched him, eyes heavy and overcast. Slowly—carefully—Erik trailed his fingers up his arm and skated them briefly over his neck. He cupped the edge of his jaw in his palm and his thumb rubbed slow circles into Charles’ skin. His body flushed with heat at the intimacy of the gesture, and he stood with bated breath as Erik traced the lines and planes of his face, stomach wrought with anticipation at what he would do next. Erik’s index and middle finger came together and played gently at his temple.

Charles’ eyes went wide.

“No,” he gasped as his vision whitened. “Erik, no.”

It was too late. Erik’s thoughts trickled into him in a steady rhythm, laced with intent. It was all he had ever wanted from him, this innate sense of trust. He’d had it, at first, until Erik decided that some cards were best held close to his chest. He’d had it before—before Erik left, taking Charles’ only real family with him; before he was paralyzed from the waist down; and before he was _taken._

Charles curled the fingers of his uninjured hand around Erik’s wrist. When it did nothing to deter him, they tightened. The stream of thoughts continued to filter through him, a barrage of images, impressions and emotions that were as strong as they were foreign. A high-pitched whine sounded in the back of his mind, sharp and intense. He relinquished his hold on Erik to claw at his own head, doubling over in pain as the noise reached an ear-splitting timbre. Erik’s fingers had slipped but the onslaught had not ceased. If anything, it deepened.

He paid no attention to the thoughts—he couldn’t, the noise was too loud, too shrill. It felt like knives were being embedded into his brain, front and center. It hurt like nothing else he had ever experienced, not even the death of Sebastian Shaw. Charles acted in the knowledge that if he didn’t hold Shaw in place, Erik was as good as dead. He’d learned a great many things that day: that he’d kill for Erik Lensherr and that he could never let it happen again. The pain of the coin piercing Shaw’s—and, by extension, Charles’—skin had been bearable in his need to keep Erik safe. This pain, on the other hand, had no form or direction, other than to cause him irrevocable harm. It had no purpose.

Charles screamed, and the noise stopped.

Sunspots danced across his vision as Charles opened his eyes to stare blearily at his reflection. He pulled his hands away from his ears. They were slicked with blood. There was too much of it to have come from the gashes across his knuckles and when Charles reached up to touch the side of his face, his fingers gathered in a sticky, hot mess. He examined them in complete incomprehension, until the moment that something far more troubling caught his attention.

_Erik._

Erik skidded to a halt in the doorway, having run down the hall at the sound of his distress. His chest heaved from exertion and when he took in the scene, his expression a mixture of confusion and pain. Charles winced at the sight he made, bleeding and distraught. His mind was silent save for the low hum of background activity that was always present around others. There was no inkling of Erik’s thoughts, no open connection between them. There was nothing but Erik’s wide, grey eyes as he watched him in surprise, concern… and fear.

Charles felt a similar fear in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know how to deal with what was happening to him. He didn’t know how to deal with something that felt so real being false. Erik’s fingers had grazed the side of his face, thoughts intertwined with Charles’. He’d felt it, and still did. The impression, the ghost of a touch, was scribbled into his skin, the vulnerability in Erik’s eyes tattooed upon his eyelids. There was no evidence to indicate that what he had experienced wasn’t real—nothing but the shock that blossomed in the forefront of Erik’s mind and the distinct lack of recognition that the past few minutes had taken place.

This time, when Erik crowded him in, it was in a different manner entirely. Charles’ feet faltered against the tile as he retreated backwards for every step forward Erik took. They continued the game until his back hit the edge of the sink. Erik loomed large in front of him. He was frowning; features hard but for his eyes which softened in concern. He laid his hand on Charles’ elbow, gently, and watched him like a hawk.

“Let me see, Charles.”

There was no room for negotiation in Erik’s hard, flat order. Charles acquiesced immediately, a little stunned. He let go of his injured hand and slowly, tentatively, placed it in Erik’s waiting palm. His eyes honed in on the abrasions and the bruises that were starting to form underneath. Erik ran his thumb over the purpling skin and frowned when Charles breathed sharply in response.

They didn’t speak, not even as Erik stretched around him to retrieve a roll of gauze from the cabinet. Rather than tell him to move aside, Erik blanketed Charles’ body with his own. Heat seeped through his clothing in every area Erik touched, a hot line down his front and by his sides.

Erik took a washcloth from the drawer and ran it under the water, all the while keeping hold of his hand. He refused to let it go, which meant that everything he did took twice as long to complete. It was endearing and slightly ridiculous, but Charles knew if he mentioned it to Erik he would stop and Charles—Charles didn’t want that. He was surprised by just how much he didn’t want that. So he kept quiet.

Erik ran the damp cloth over Charles’ knuckles in a slow, sweeping motion. Charles could see how worried he was underneath the cold veneer, especially when their eyes met. It was impossible from then on not to see how exhausted he looked, how jerkily he moved. Erik wound the gauze with the practice of a man who had seen far too much violence in his lifetime, but endured nonetheless.

Charles hitched a breath when Erik dug in too hard and pain shot up his arm. He glanced up to find out what was wrong, why Erik had stopped all of a sudden, only to realize that the other man’s eyes were trained directly on him. Charles wilted under the weight of Erik’s stare. Erik had retreated behind the safety of the mask he wore, the mask he became whenever Charles got too close. Charles knew before Erik spoke that whatever was forming in the spaces between them was lost, at least for the moment.

“What happened to you?” Erik asked abruptly. The question was stunted and awkward but determined.

Charles resisted the urge to respond in ignorance. He knew Erik wasn’t referring to his hand and avoiding the subject would only anger them both. Nothing but an answer would deter him, and it had to be one Erik believed. Except Charles couldn’t give him those answers—or, he could _,_ but he didn’t want to. The idea of lying hurt, but the idea of telling the truth was even more painful.

He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

Charles looked at Erik, really looked at him. He saw a man torn between friendship and duty. Concern played clear as day on his face, as if Erik didn’t care who saw it anymore. But the underlying hardness still lingered in his eyes. Emma’s words echoed in Charles’ head.

_I can’t read him. You, on the other hand, know him personally._

As long as Emma Frost whispered in Erik’s ear, as long as he put the Brotherhood and their questionable intentions before what they had—something Charles couldn’t exactly fault him for, to be honest—then it couldn’t be helped. Charles had his answer.

He wouldn’t be telling Erik anything, especially not the truth.

Charles placed his uninjured hand on Erik’s shoulder. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

He paused to take in Erik’s reaction. As predicted, every shutter he had opened snapped shut in an instant. But Charles wouldn’t take back his response, even if he could. Erik didn’t know it yet, but it was what he needed to hear. What they _both_ needed to hear.

Charles’ mind was a hurricane of thoughts, none of them positive, when he exited the room. The moment he stepped into the corridor, however, the world veered sharply off axis. His vision spun. His breathing faltered. He threw out an arm to stabilize himself, palm flat against the wall. It grounded him, but only for a moment. Charles barely had time to release a terrified whimper as the hall around him shifted into something else entirely. It wasn’t a fragment of his memory, or the far-away impression of a dream like the others. One second, Charles was staring down the stone and metal pathway. The next, he wasn’t.

He stood in a hallway of about the same width and height as the Brotherhood’s, but the similarities ended there. The ceiling, walls and floor were painted a crisp, bright white, devoid of color. It was too streamlined, too perfect, to be anything but intimidating. People brushed past him as they moved up and down the corridor, paying him no mind whatsoever.

Panic clawed at his chest, down his throat where it winded him absolutely. He jerked his head up and locked eyes with a figure that stood stock still in the periphery of his vision. The fluorescent lights overhead were harsh and everything beneath them was cast in sharp relief. The man Charles saw—the one that failed to pass him by like the rest—looked like death warmed over. His body was thin to the point of being skeletal. Bile rose, unwelcome and unbidden, to the back of Charles’ throat at the sight. He was staring at a cadaver, a shell of a man. His stance was stiff and lifeless, his face devoid of expression. Dark bruises ringed his deep-set eyes, which themselves were trained on Charles and tracked his every movement. His foot hovered on a step. Did he really want to get closer?

No. He didn’t.

Except…

He hadn’t been certain at first, but Charles knew this man. The body was unfamiliar to him, but the light that shone in his eyes—the only part of the man that expressed anything at all—he recognized. It was the man who had saved his life. The one he’d had visions of but hadn’t really seen until now. He was caught so deep in the web of lies that he didn’t know what was true and what was false anymore. The thought was terrifying, utterly debilitating. He surged forward on a whim. He couldn’t do this alone, not anymore, not—

“They cannot find me. Not yet.”

Charles came to a halt.

“You gave your word.”

The voice echoed down the hall; deep, cultured and old. Charles parted his lips to respond but never got the chance. An ear-shattering shriek filled the open air around them, a sound of sheer, unadulterated terror. The scream was followed by another, and whoever it was, they were close. By the time a third and fourth voice rang out, Charles could have sworn they were right on top of him, if not for the fact that he couldn’t see anybody. There were no people, nor was there any threat. The only thing he fought was his own confusion.

The explosion took him by surprise, despite his hypervigilance. He had no time to react. In a split second, everything had changed. A wave of light and heat tore straight through him, but didn’t cause him pain. It fanned outwards, in a bizarre sort of slow motion. Charles watched as it engulfed a man—the first person to appear after Charles had honed in on the familiar figure—who had run around the corner and headed straight for him. His skin rippled like water in heavy wind and he was thrown backwards against the wall. The flash blinded, the heat struck, and the man was pinned by the force of the detonation before his entire body was consumed by it. He died in an instant, too close to the heart of it to have survived. Charles’ eyes were as wide as saucers, and widened further still as the walls collapsed and the ceiling caved in.

As the building burned from the inside out, as people ran down the hall straight past him in their desperate bid to escape, Charles turned back to see that the man remained. He too was unaffected by whatever happened to the rest of the complex.

Another person careened down the corridor and ran straight for Charles. Charles flinched, only for the young lady to pass straight through him. His eyes snapped up to the man, in hope that he might have the answer to the strange, perplexing riddle this hallucination had become. He started upon realizing that the man had drawn closer while Charles had been distracted. Unable to pass up such an opportunity, Charles took in the minute details of his face, filed them away for future reference. The man’s skin was waxy and paper-thin, his face had a distinct lack of expression and his body hung upright in a stunted, grotesque manner, like it was already dead but hadn’t received the memo yet.

“The explosion,” Charles gasped, as the pieces fell together. “Was I here, when it—?”

The man’s lips pulled downward, on the verge of an actual expression of dismay.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

Charles shook his head in disbelief. “Fragments, mostly, that aren’t making much sense. I also have a theory that I really don’t like. But you, you were the one that helped me escape, right? The one I promised to help in return? Tell me where you are, what happened, how you’re communicating with me, _anything._ Tell me, and I’ll do my utmost to find you.” He gestured between them with his hands, in hope that it would help convey the urgency of the situation. Whether he succeeded or not remained to be seen.

“That is not what we agreed on,” was the response he received, solemn and cryptic. “You have done well to defer them from discovering the truth thus far, but it will not last. There will come a time where revealing what you know will become a matter of urgency, of greater significance than keeping your promise to me. What you have seen, what your government has done. Their mistakes must be rectified.”

“They can help, you know.” Charles couldn’t help but comment, albeit hesitantly. It was the strangest experience, knowing exactly what he was saying while at the same time having no idea what he was actually talking about. “Erik and the Brotherhood. They saved my life after you left.”

“I didn’t leave by choice,” the stranger said, deadpan. “I was weakened, I could not maintain.”

“And now?” Charles pushed, not particularly caring how rude he was being. Not now, not after everything. “Do you know what’s happening to me? Why I can talk to you, even when you’re nowhere near here? My telepathy is back, you know. I can’t sense you anywhere.”

The man didn’t sigh so much as he did wheeze. He truly looked like he rested on the line between life and death, the proverbial cliff-face that yawned deep and wide. “It is, as you would say, a gift. When the time is right, I will come for you and we will end what they started.”

He reared back, step after step after step until a wide chasm of empty space stood between the two of them. Charles watched in helpless pain as the building burnt to the ground, still completely unaffected by his surroundings in any physical manner.

“What did they start?” he asked, shakily, as he watched the wallpaper peel and curl under the heat of the fire that flickered around them. “What’s coming?”

It took a moment for the man to respond, so long that Charles wondered whether or not he’d even heard him in the first place. But he had.

The man’s face was indecipherable, his bright eyes hard and unrelenting.

“War,” he declared, and disappeared into the darkness.

Charles opened his eyes to the draw of Erik’s fingers over his shoulder as they struggled to pull him upright. He was half-slumped on the floor, cheeks flushed and pulse jumping. Every inhalation circulated clean air through his body and brought him back down to reality, grounded him bodily in the same way that the concern in Erik’s surface thoughts did so mentally. The scent of burnt flesh drifted away, and with it Charles’ nausea.

“Erik?” he whispered softly. The sudden blare of Erik’s mind threatened to deafen him. He flinched away. “What—what’s wrong?”

It wasn’t Erik’s mind, he realized. It was everything. His shields were in place but had been lowered, something that utterly bewildered him. He pressed his head against the smooth, metal surface of the wall behind him and allowed his body to relax. When it no longer felt like his brain would come apart at the seams at any visual or auditory stimuli, he chanced a look at Erik.

The other man looked torn between two extremes. The downward curve of his mouth suggested irritation, but his body sagged in relief. Charles saw the precise moment that the latter won out. “You really need to stop doing that, Charles,” Erik growled in exasperation. He folded his body to sit down next to him, long legs stretched across the walkway. “You know I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

“I know,” Charles replied, in a voice so miserable that all the fight left Erik in a single blow.

“If you won’t talk to me,” Erik said after a moment’s consideration, “if you _can’t_ , then please—find someone you can talk to.”

Charles drew in a shaking breath. “I need…” he trailed off. His voice was hoarse from disuse while also smarting like he had screamed his lungs out only moments before. By the tension still written into every line and plane of Erik’s body, he wouldn’t put it outside the realm of possibility. Erik leaned in to capture the words that spilled from his mouth. His blue-grey eyes studied him intently.

“Hank,” Charles heard himself say. “I need Hank.”

He cleared his throat. He wasn’t doing this properly, if the pinched look on Erik’s face was any indication. Charles scrabbled for the words he needed to convey the situation to him. He had to make Erik understand without putting them both in jeopardy.

“The CIA, I think I know what they’re doing,” he implored. Recognition dawned over Erik’s features and he sobered immediately. “I think I know how to find them. But I need the X-Men. Especially Hank—God, my _head._ ” He clutched at his temples, at the deep-seated agony there.

“You can’t just—”

Charles leapt to his feet. His entire body snapped to attention, straightened in a single, sharp motion. He stared down at Erik, offered his hand. Erik took it, allowed Charles to take his weight and lift him up. “You don’t understand,” he added quickly. “If what we suspect is true, that there are others out there, then we don’t have a lot of time. In fact, we don’t have _any_ time. I know you have my reservations, my friend, but at least let us meet on neutral ground. You’d push equally as hard to contact your Brotherhood if we were at Westchester, and I’d let you. You know I would. Please grant me the same courtesy that I’d extend to you in this circumstance.”

Erik looked like he was about to protest further, but under Charles’ stern gaze and the strength of his argument, his rebuttal collapsed. After what felt like an age of stillness, he nodded. “Azazel will take you to the surface. Call them, arrange the meeting.”

“Thank you, Erik,” Charles said as his chest caved in relief. He ducked his head to catch Erik’s gaze, which he’d averted to the floor.  When he had his attention, Charles smiled earnestly. “I’ve given no reason for you to trust me, but you do and I’m grateful for it. More than you know.”

He looked like he was about to speak but thought better of it, an odd look passing over his tired features. Charles slapped Erik once on the bicep, a familiar touch of companionship, and tore off in pursuit of Azazel. As insightful as it had been to spend time with the Brotherhood—Raven and Erik in particular—Charles didn’t feel welcome there, not entirely.

It was time he reunited with his family.

- 

“Understood. We’ll meet tonight at the coordinates you specified.” Hank’s voice was tinny and distant through the phone receiver. Charles laced his fingers through the phone cord and pulled gently, as if doing so would bring him closer to Westchester, to home. Hank was safe, albeit concerned. The entire team was safe. The strict line of his shoulders relaxed as tension he hadn’t known he possessed ebbed away into nothing. Hank sensed his nostalgia and added, quietly, “It’s good to hear from you, Professor.”

Charles felt his cheeks redden in shame. He scrubbed a hand along the back of his neck, self-conscious all of a sudden, as if the world would judge him if he were too noticeable. Azazel stood less than twenty feet away in the shadow of a nearby alley, his head bowed in silent concentration. It was only the two of them; there were no bystanders.

“How many times have I told you, Hank?” he chided in an attempt to make light of the situation. “I’m not your professor just yet.”

Hank’s laugh was a deep rumble that sounded almost artificial over the phone. Charles counted it as a win, a big one. His voice was low and amused when he conceded to the demand. “Very well, Charles.”

There was a pause.

“Thank you,” Charles said, suddenly, in a manner that left no room for misunderstanding. He wasn’t talking about Hank’s use of his first name, and they both knew it. “I mean it.”

“I know you do,” Hank replied. He managed to sound both lost and reassured at the same time. Charles wasn’t sure what to do with that. He decided it could wait until they met up, until he explained the situation to them in full.

Charles tapped the fingers of his free hand against the telephone box in consideration. “Do you have everything you need to run the search?”

He didn’t want to push the issue, but it was imperative. Hank was largely receptive of Charles’ idea to hack into the CIA’s surveillance network, even more so at the idea of tracking down similar research facilities to the one Charles was held in. He was both surprised and intrigued that Charles hadn’t asked the Brotherhood for help, but he didn’t ask why and Charles wasn’t all that inclined to tell. He trusted Raven and, despite the tension between them, he also trusted Erik. He _didn’t_ trust Emma Frost, or the other members of Erik’s new team.

At all.

“I think I do,” Hank said, then seemed to rethink his answer. “Actually, I know I do. I’ll run it now _._ I should have the answer for you tonight.”

Charles smiled. “Amazing as always, Hank.”

“I’d better start on now then,” Hank murmured, both embarrassed and pleased.

Charles uttered his goodbyes and hung up. He lifted his shoulders, straightened his spine and felt lighter than he had in months. It was remarkable how invigorating a simple conversation could be. He set down the phone gently in its cradle, understanding that the instant he set foot outside the phone booth, the world would surge up to meet him once again. He took his time, ran his hands down either side of the booth. When he finally felt ready to leave, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold, mid-day breeze.

Azazel watched him approach with dark eyes that glittered. He offered his flame-red hand to Charles, who took it. His eyes shut in a brief moment of concentration, their target destination tattooed bright across his mind, and they were off.

Charles fought the disorientation that accompanied the act of being wrenched bodily from one location to the next. He swallowed down the nausea in his throat, hands fisted by his side. Azazel was a steady column of heat on his right as Charles gathered his bearings. They were closer to the surface than he had seen yet, Azazel unable to teleport through the deeper layers of rock at such a distance. As he waited for the other mutant to teleport them again, Charles followed the dark, red hue of Azazel’s skin with his eyes until it disappeared under his tailored suit. He took in the scar on his cheek and the quick, smooth flick of his tail behind him. Charles stared at the latter, transfixed. He had seen what it could do—the way it swooped in and stabbed in the blink of an eye, the arrowhead shape of its tip as sharp and deadly as the blade of any knife. Charles jerked his head up in time to catch a pensive look on Azazel’s strict features.

The taller man turned, as if he’d sensed something coming. Charles scanned the outgoing area and smiled.

“Charles!” Raven called from down the hall, towel-drying her hair. She had only just returned from her training, if the tracksuit pants and tight, sleeveless shirt was any indication. Her scaled skin was shiny with sweat. Charles knew she could shift away the moisture rather easily, but there was a certain satisfaction gained by a warm shower at the end of the day. Charles only wished he were as disciplined. Nonetheless, he was proud of her. She sidled up to him with yellow eyes the color of honeycomb and a warm smile, a look which grew amused at the sight of Azazel by his side. “How was the ride?”

“Azazel’s ability is absolutely fascinating!” Charles said animatedly. His hands gestured from him to Azazel and then back again. “After completing several such jumps that I believe were for my benefit more than his, I have come to the conclusion that the act of teleportation actually displaces the body through an alternate dimension in the nanoseconds before it reappears at the secondary location. The red and black smoke left behind after a teleport could be representative of this alternate dimension, though I can’t know for sure.”

He turned to Azazel, who observed their conversation with interest. His surface thoughts were contemplative, but on what Charles did not know. Raven’s mouth twisted into a smile that only grew wider when Charles stood at Azazel’s shoulder. “You are very lucky, my friend. Your mutation is quite extraordinary. To close your eyes and open them in someplace else, to _be_ someplace else on a thought or a whim is simply—”

Raven snorted. She twined her arm around his and pulled at it gently. “Azazel is well aware of how his mutation works, Charles.”

Azazel gave a swift nod. “I am,” he confirmed.

Charles ran a hand through his hair, face flushed. “Of course. Of course you do. My apologies.”

“He is a curious one, _tovarisch_ ,” Azazel said suddenly. His voice, now Charles had heard him speak more than two syllables, was deep and accented. It was also eloquent, something which came as a pleasant surprise. “You are not related by blood but you share many similarities. I couldn’t understand what Mystique meant when she said you inspire those who follow you, but I am starting to see for myself now.”

What stunned him more than Azazel’s words was the way Raven blushed in response. Anybody else would interpret it as embarrassment at being caught talking about her brother in such a way, but Charles knew Raven. Getting called out by saying something nice about him would elicit a smile from her and a reaffirmation of whatever it was she’d said. His eyes flickered between Azazel and Raven, calculating. He turned his back to Azazel to shoot her a look, eyebrows raised. Raven widened her eyes and made an aborted motion with her hands.

Charles frowned at her.

 _‘Charles, don’t!’_ Raven begged, eyes wide in panic. Half-tangled fears of Charles warning her against it crystallized in her mind, the worst of which where he warned _Azazel_ away from _her_ instead. She truly believed Azazel would listen to Charles, and her chance would be gone. Raven didn’t need a big brother in this situation. She needed a friend.

Charles’ face split into a grin. Charles may have decided to let go of his reservations, but she was _not_ getting off easily.

 _‘You like him, you like him,’_ he thought to her in a singsong tone.

Raven huffed. _‘How old are you, twelve?’_

But she was surprised and pleased by his reaction. Charles felt, for the first time in a long time, that he’d done the right thing by her.

Raven was the first to speak up, realizing, at the precise moment Charles did, that their silent conversation was just that— _silent_. She patted him on the arm. “Come along, Charles. Magneto wants to see you before it’s time to go.”

The smile on her face was small but sincere when she twisted to face Azazel.

“Frost is running us through drills at 1800,” she relayed. “I’ll meet you there.”

Azazel bowed his head low and disappeared in a puff of red-black smoke. Charles watched the display with interest. Raven rolled her eyes. When he glanced at her, however, she was smiling.

“Groovy, isn’t it?” she asked, an amused twinkle in her eye.

“Groovy doesn’t _begin_ to cover it.”

Raven’s eyebrows shot up. “So you approve?”

Charles chose his next words carefully, “…I don’t _not_ approve?”

He winced. Raven’s face grew pinched at the non-answer. Charles stopped walking and smiled tiredly at her. “It’s your life, Raven. I’m pretty sure we’ve established by now that you’ll live it the way you see fit. Who am I to stop you from doing that?”

Raven hugged herself tightly. She looked impossibly young in the low light. “You’re the only one who could, Charles.”

“But I’m not,” he argued, and watched as she pinned him with a look of startled confusion. “Or I shouldn’t be. You left to escape that, so don’t bring it into your life here. You make your own choices and you live with the consequences of those choices. Nobody can make that decision for you, but they won’t pay the price if things go wrong, either.”

He bit his lip, tried hard to find a way to show her what he meant and how he meant it. “I love you, you know I do. I want to see you safe, but more than that—I want to see you happy. And if a tall, dark, handsome teleporter is what you want, I hope you find the tallest, darkest, handsomest teleporter out there.”

Raven’s lips wavered into a huge, beaming grin. She leapt forward and latched onto him giddily. Charles wrapped his arms around her and sighed into her hair. “Thank you,” she gasped. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Charles smiled against her skin.

“Anytime,” he said, and by the way her arms tightened, she knew he meant it.

When they continued, Charles and Raven walked closer together, playfully bumping each other’s shoulders in a childish game that stretched on until they came to a halt in front of a door, indistinguishable from the others. When Charles turned to her, eyebrows raised, Raven smirked. Then she rapped on the door and promptly abandoned him there with a cryptic whisper. “Returning the favor.”

Charles heard alarm bells start ringing in his head. Raven, for all her strengths, was _awful_ at returning favors.

“Enter,” Erik called from within the room. Charles shot Raven a scathing look of betrayal when she peeked around the corner. She pointed at the door, gave him two thumbs up, and disappeared. The sound of her laughter followed him through the door and into Erik’s domain.

The first thing Charles noticed was the gigantic hole on the opposite end of the room. Daylight streamed in from the makeshift window, casting patterns across the floor. All that separated them from the outside world was a thick pane of glass set into a steel frame, which was fused deep into the rock. Erik stood in front of it with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on the horizon.

Charles paced the length of the large, circular room and took in the finer details.

Shaw’s helmet sat on a thick, steel desk parallel to the window. A pen with a metal nib hovered in the air and lowered itself into a pot of sepia colored ink. Any distaste at seeing the helmet fled as he peeked over the edge of the desk to watch Erik’s mutation at work. Charles reached out and ran his fingers along the edge of the pen, wonderstruck. He thought he saw Erik shiver as he brushed the metal tip, but dismissed it as a trick of the light. Erik’s spine was as rigid as ever when Charles turned to look, a solid line of tension by the glass.

Erik’s quarters were sparsely decorated the same way his room at Westchester was, but a growing collection of books on a shelf to the side suggested it might not be that way for much longer. It was a bittersweet thought. Erik had finally healed enough to call somewhere home, but that place wasn’t with Charles. It never would be, not as long as they opposed each other.

Charles flew to the window, and to Erik, like a moth to flame. He’d been outside less than an hour ago, in a place where he could feel the wind in his hair and the sun warming his face, but there’d been no time to appreciate it.

As he settled in beside Erik, Charles felt his body vibrate with tension. He took in the spectacular view before them—a veritable mountain range, with craggy outcrops and dipping valleys, and a stream that wove thin and vein-like through the hills. It was gorgeous. In any other moment, it would have astonished him. Discomfort swam in his gut, twisted into a dark mass at the bottom of it. It danced up his spine, leaving a cold sweat in its wake. He shook, though he felt neither frightened nor cold.

Erik reached out and grazed the back of his fingers against Charles’ trembling hand. He took it in his, blanketed it in the warmth of his palm.

Charles stared down at their interlocked hands with something akin to disbelief. The last time Erik had drawn close to him, it had been a hallucination. Nevertheless, the seconds passed and nothing changed. Erik didn’t move or speak. Charles felt the low hum of discontent in the back of his head ebb away into total silence. His body relaxed and the shaking stopped.

He wasn’t at peace, not by a long shot, but Charles felt… normal.

He felt _good_.

Charles drew in a sharp take of breath when Erik stroked smooth, slow circles into the sensitive skin above his knuckles. His left hand, the injured one, tapped a rhythm into his thigh as a distraction. The curl of Erik’s fingers set a hot pulse through his body. Just when he believed he had it under control, Erik’s thumb followed the curve of his wrist and Charles let out a breathy moan.

The atmosphere in the room shifted immediately, into something powerful and tense.

Charles wrenched his hand away as Erik’s face went blank in surprise.

“I am so, _so_ sorry,” he choked, mortification staining his cheeks. He couldn’t meet his eyes, terrified of what he’d see if he did. Nothing about the situation was fair, for either of them. Charles couldn’t change how he reacted to Erik, and Erik couldn’t change how he didn’t.

“What are you doing, Charles?” Erik asked in a low rumble. He wasn’t angry, not discernibly at least. But he was upset.

Charles blinked down at the floor, face wet all of a sudden. “I don’t know, I—”

He stopped abruptly as a foreign heat touched his cheek. Erik’s fingertips grazed his skin, first on one side and then the other, wiping away the errant tears as they fell. Then they dipped lower, to take his chin and tilt it up. “Look at me.”

Erik watched him intently when Charles lifted his eyes.

“Better,” he said roughly. “Now, are we going to talk, or are you going to cut me out again?”

Charles hesitated. Erik waited patiently, his surface thoughts quiet as he studied every nuance Charles gave. The window of opportunity grew smaller every time Charles avoided the question. The idea of missing it compelled him to speak.

“I lied.”

It sounded like an easy thing to admit, but it wasn’t, even if they both knew it already. Charles swallowed past the lump in his throat and waited anxiously. Erik dropped his hand down to Charles’ shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.

“Come with me,” he said as he walked backwards, beckoning Charles with a crook of his fingers.

Erik’s bare feet shifted gracefully, his footsteps barely audible over the smooth, stone floor. Charles, on the other hand, sounded like a galloping horse. His shoes thundered across the room after Erik, leading him towards the—

Oh.

_Oh._

Erik was never the type of man to care where he slept, so it didn’t surprise Charles to see only a small corner of his room carved out for resting purposes. As Erik came to a stop, however, Charles couldn’t help but take in the solid metal frame, rectangular shape and neatly pressed sheets. Erik sat and patted the spot on the bed next to him, a spot he intended for Charles.

The vague feeling of dread in his stomach was overwhelmed by a very different type of tremulous emotion as Charles settled in beside him. It had finally registered that this was where Erik lived, where he slept. Charles tried in vain to slow the erratic beat of his heart.

“Talk to me,” Erik said firmly.

Charles sighed. His eyes flickered from Erik’s face to the window, where it filtered light into the room. “You have to understand, it’s not—I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t remember. The past week and a half is a blur that’s only now starting to make any sense. I started to find fragments in my dreams, which was bearable if not horribly confusing. But then—”

He gestured hopelessly with his hands, motioned restlessly to the empty air in front of them. Charles grimaced when his attempt to explain fell flat. Erik’s deep chuckle caught him off guard.

“Don’t give yourself a conniption, Charles,” he said with a wry grin. “Speak your mind and I’ll follow.”

Charles smiled gratefully. “Thank you, my friend.”

He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. He bowed his head and lost it in thought.

“I have these moments,” he began, pensively, “where I’m here, in the present, and I know it’s real. I have these other moments, where I’m back at the facility, reliving what happened there, and I know it’s a memory because nothing is quite as tangible.”

Charles studied his fingers.

“Those are the easy moments,” he murmured. “They make sense. They’re divided, disconnected, and they know their place. Until the moment that I’m here, in the present, and I know I’m hallucinating. I don’t just think it, I don’t just believe it—I _know_ it. Then, like the flick of a switch, I’m there and it’s real. It’s more real than anything I have ever experienced, more real than this moment right here. It’s hyper-reality.”

He glanced up at Erik, face half-hidden in his hands. “You’ve stumbled into more than one of those moments, I’m afraid.”

Charles placed his hands in his lap, toyed nervously with the hem of his shirt and watched as Erik’s facial muscles shifted into a variety of expressions. They settled on thoughtful, and sad.

 _I know,_ he thought silently. _Trust me, I know._

“To answer your question—or a subset of it, at least—there are some things I don’t want to tell you because they’re painful,” he said at length, when it became clear that Erik, while contemplative, wasn’t inclined to share any of his thoughts with Charles.

Erik’s head snapped up. “And the rest?”

“The rest,” Charles repeated with a sigh. “The rest I _can’t_ tell you. That’s where the true lying begins. You ask why and I can’t answer. You go through all the reasons why on your own until you reach the few that are plausible and when you think you have the right one you ask and I can’t answer. You ask ‘who are you protecting’ and I can’t answer. You ask ‘why are you protecting them’ and I can’t answer. You ask ‘who are you to put the lives of others on the line for a matter of principle’ and I. Can’t. Answer.”

“Not even if you want to?” Erik asked, vaguely.

Charles’ tentative expression collapsed in on itself. He fixed Erik with a stare of genuine sorrow. “Not even if I want to.”

He wished, not for the first time, that his morals didn’t prevent him from taking a glimpse into Erik’s thoughts.

“I have a question,” Erik said, abruptly. “One I think I can ask without it being a problem.”

Charles waved a hand and laughed, wearily. “By all means.”

The last thing he expected was for Erik to grin at him, wide and boyishly. As Charles gawked, dumbstruck, he asked, “Do you swear to tell me the truth?”

“And nothing but the truth,” Charles smiled when he recovered, “so help me God?”

Erik raised his hands and chucked heartily. “I want it on record that _you_ were the one to bring a higher power into this, not me.”

Charles snorted, taken aback but pleased by the sudden change of pace. “Noted.”

Erik’s smile waned into something almost shy.

“Earlier, when I touched you, you made a noise like you were—like it felt good. Did it?”

The ambience of the room cast Erik’s eyes in alternating shades of pale green and grey. Shadows played across his chiseled features, highlighting his cheekbones and the light dusting of stubble on his jaw. Charles committed the image to memory, drew a breath and answered:

“Yes.”

Erik released the breath he’d been holding, face collapsing in relief. Charles couldn’t help the mirth that bubbled in his throat at the sight.

“What?” Erik asked, with the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Charles shook his head, mouth splitting into a grin. “Just when I consider you above everyone else, you do something so ordinary and relatable that I’m reminded all over again how human you are. I mean that figuratively, of course.”

“Of course,” Erik echoed blankly.

Caught off guard, Charles scrambled for a way to apologize. He had just started to speak when the offense on Erik’s expression crumbled and he sniggered. Charles spluttered.

“You,” he exclaimed, “are an absolute menace!”

Erik’s body shook with laughter, erupting anew every time he looked up at Charles’ indignant face.

Charles bit his lip, only to discover how difficult that was to achieve while one was beaming.

“Charles,” Erik said, gasping for breath. He grinned unreservedly. “Come here.”

Charles sidled up to Erik, only for the other man to wave him closer. They were pressed together from shoulder to mid-thigh before he looked anywhere near satisfied. Erik’s eyes dropped purposefully to Charles’ mouth, his lips parting. He spoke gruffly. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

In the split second before he did so, Erik’s gaze darted up. The heat exchanged in that one look made his insides tighten. Erik brought both of his hands up to cup Charles’ face, thumb grazing his bottom lip. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.

The kiss was sweeter than Charles anticipated, close-mouthed and a little dry. Erik’s hands curled possessively in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Charles licked his lips and they both groaned when everything became warm and slick between them. Erik slid his mouth in perfect rhythm against Charles, who opened for him. He sunk his teeth into Erik’s bottom lip and chased the sting of it with his tongue, smiling at the way the fingers in his hair tightened in response.

Heat flared low in his abdomen. The pressure rose with every tantalizing drag, every second Erik remained fused to him, until it wasn’t enough. Charles pulled away long enough to rest his hand on Erik’s chest, over his heart which beat quickly for him, and push them both down onto the bed. Erik made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat at the absence of Charles’ mouth, but surrendered all the same.

His face hovered enticingly over Erik’s, lips red and kiss-swollen. When he surged up to meet him, however, Charles smirked and ducked out of the way. Ignoring all protests (of which there were many) Charles dipped to drag his tongue over the hollow of Erik’s throat. He tasted like sweat and something else, something clean and spicy and _his._ His breath hitched under Charles’ ministrations, hands splayed against the back of his skull. Charles hummed into the warmth of Erik’s neck when he massaged his fingers alongside the more sensitive areas of his scalp, until a flick of his wrist brought Charles’ entire body crashing down on top of him.

“Erik,” he gasped, fingers curling into his chest.

His plea went unsaid, but Erik smiled against his skin like it’d come through loud and clear. He delivered a swift peck to Charles’ forehead and chuckled at the whine he received in return. The moment Erik’s fingers dug into that spot again, every form of tension bled out of him in an instant. The fire within him dulled into pleasant warmth, the buzz of which he felt from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

The feelings remained, but there was no longer any need to facilitate them. If the soft lull of Erik’s surface thoughts were any indication, he felt the same way. Charles released a questioning tendril, a confirmation of sorts, and laughed softly at the answer: _‘go to sleep, Charles’._

Charles collapsed bonelessly against Erik, head tucked underneath his chin. He fastened his lips to Erik’s throat a final time, felt the hot pulse of his blood underneath the skin, and allowed his breathing to slow.

He slept and didn’t dream, but for the rhythmic thud of Erik’s heartbeat in his ear that became the thunder over a roiling ocean.

The prelude to a storm.

-

The meeting point was in the industrial part of town, at a warehouse a few miles outside the city limits. Crates of unidentified goods lined the inner fringes of the colossal building but it was otherwise bare. The ceiling hung high overhead, steel walls that tapered to a point.

Charles arrived with the Brotherhood fifteen minutes before Hank showed up with Alex, a pre-arranged move agreed on by both parties.

When they were ready to teleport, Azazel insisted that they take the hands of the people next to them. Charles ended up sandwiched between Erik and Raven, his sister a familiar weight by his side. Erik’s hand was warm in his and when he turned to give him a sidelong glance, Charles saw a glimpse of something that stole his breath. Charles hadn’t seen Erik grin so broadly since they’d trained at Westchester. It was wide and cheshire-like; the broad curl of his lips barely contained within the lines of his face.

Charles saw traces of that smile everywhere. As he took in their surroundings, he watched Erik watch him out of the corner of his eye. He’d donned his helmet to look the part, and while Charles missed the tentative connection they’d made, he had to agree it was for the best. In the brief window they’d had before he slipped it on, Erik hadn’t been able to keep his thoughts off Charles, from their fevered kisses to falling asleep in each other’s arms, something Erik was convinced they’d still be doing if not for this meeting. Erik hid his smile behind the thick overlay of the helmet and it vanished the moment anyone but Charles turned to look at him, but it was there. Because of him.

_Him._

“They’re here,” Emma Frost announced, and dashed forward to flank Erik’s other side. Their team consisted of Emma, Erik, Raven and Azazel. Riptide and Angel had opted to stay back at the base. Charles hadn’t seen a single inkling of either of them since he’d arrived and on Angel’s part, it was no accident. The idea that she hated him enough to go out of her way to avoid him, or that she operated under the belief that _he_ hated _her_ worried him deeply, but it was neither the time nor the place to think such things.

“Charles,” Hank began as he walked through the threshold of the door into the warehouse proper. In front of him was a wheelchair, maneuvered forward by the handlebars on the back. “I’ve brought—”

The words died in his throat. Charles couldn’t help the smile that dawned on his face at the sight of him, of them both.

Hank bypassed surprise quickly and leapt straight into the dilemma of awe versus concern. Alex, on the other hand, gaped openly at him until Charles made a few, easy strides forward to hold him close.

“When did this start?” Hank demanded, when Charles hugged within an inch of his life. He wrapped an arm absently around his body, squeezed once, then reared back to get a better look at him. His eyes narrowed. “How long has it been since you regained feeling?”

Charles winced a little at the question. His answer, when offered, was tentative. “A day?”

“A _day_?” Hank sounded appalled. “And you didn’t think to call me earlier? You know how important this is, Charles.”

His tone, while chiding, wasn’t condescending. Hank spoke from a place of true concern and honest, understandable frustration. If Charles were in his position, he’d have reacted in precisely the same way.

In the end, he sighed and said, “I know. I’m sorry. But I’m fine.”

“Maybe,” Hank agreed, adjusting his glasses with the slightest tap from his furred, blue fingers, “but we have no idea what’s caused this, whether the injury has healed or if every step you take is making it worse. I brought the chair in case they hadn’t been able to find one suitable. It’s a new prototype I’ve been working on—gives you full range and motion. You’ll stay in it until I’m finished testing you.”

Charles sighed again, deeper this time. “Is that really necessary? I’m fine, better than fine, actually.”

His exasperation must have shown on his face, because Hank’s next look was one of compassion. “I want to be excited for you, Charles. Really, I do. I know how much this means to you, how much it means to all of us.”

He stepped forward and placed the palm of one gigantic hand on Charles’ shoulder. He made an effort to catch his eye before adding, “But until I know for certain that what you’re doing isn’t going to cause more damage, I’m going to have to insist.”

The sincerity in his gaze hurt. Charles felt his resistance crumble. “I—”

“The chair, Charles,” Hank demanded, deadpan. “Now.”

Charles heaved a sigh. “Yes, yes, alright.”

He shot Alex a sheepish smile and climbed into the wheelchair, legs splayed comfortably. Hank tracked the shift in his limbs with interest. Once Charles was safe from unintentionally injuring himself, Hank visibly relaxed.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “I’ll start the tests as soon as possible, okay?”

Charles rested back in the chair, elbows on the armrest and hands curled tightly in his lap. He raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate it.”

Hank knelt beside him. The muscles in his face twitched as they tried to settle on a single emotion. He grasped for words that wouldn’t come. It was both painful and touching to watch.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked, eventually.

Not one to hold onto his frustrations, Charles smiled warmly. “None at all.”

The knowledge that Charles wasn’t angry with him calmed Hank in a way his words never could. He felt his heart go out to the young man who cared so much and received so little in return.

“Good,” Hank said, lips curling at the corners. “That’s good.”

“Charles?” called Raven, her voice small. She looked worried, so much so that she reached out with her mind as well, a telepathic question mark that hung between them. Erik’s face was taut, eyes glued to the ease in which Charles negotiated the wheelchair. It hurt to look at him, to know he was on the cusp of learning something that might shatter all they had built between them. If his lies didn’t do a good enough job, then Erik’s guilt would finish it off for them. Emma’s body and mind were a total mystery to him, masked and indecipherable. Azazel watched the events unfold in front of him with interest, but hardly considered himself a part of it all.

Hank straightened and assumed a protective stance in front of Charles, who found the controls of his new chair very fascinating all of a sudden. He felt rather than saw Alex mirror Hank’s position on the other side of the chair.

“This is entirely unnecessary, you know,” Charles objected, a touch of annoyance in his tone.

Hank craned his head to look down at him. Instead of anger, as he expected, Charles saw something far worse.

Disappointment.

“You didn’t tell them? What am I saying, of _course_ you didn’t tell them.” Hank said bitterly.

Charles resisted the urge to put his head in his hands.

“I would have,” said Alex testily.

 _That’s it,_ he decided, and dropped his face into his waiting palms. He couldn’t believe this was happening, except for the part where he really could. Raven and Erik’s departure had been a sore spot for everybody. Contrary to the way he acted, Charles didn’t have a problem with them expressing their frustrations so long as their threats remained spoken and the situation didn’t escalate to violence.

What he did have a problem with, however, was them using what had happened to Charles as an excuse to stir conflict.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and lifted his head, determined to get this over with. Erik stepped forward, carefully. “Tell us what?”

Charles drew in a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nothing, Erik. Nothing at all.”

“You can’t keep it from them, Charles,” Hank said, lowly. “Not if this isn’t permanent.”

“I know, I—”

“Thanks to your stunt in Cuba, the professor hasn’t been able to walk until now.”

The words were out of Alex’s mouth before anybody could stop them. Charles felt absolute dread curl at the base of his spine. He stared at Alex in equal parts horror and betrayal. Tension bubbled under Erik’s skin, reached its breaking point and imploded.

“ _What?_ ”

Erik’s eyes flickered from Alex to Charles and back again, emotions alternating between rage (Alex) and helpless confusion (Charles). The helmet may have severed the telepathic connection between them, but it did nothing to limit the visceral one. Charles knew the moment Erik put it all together; he bypassed Alex completely, eyes fixed solely on Charles and the chair. The lips that had smiled at him, that had kissed him not an hour before were a strict, hard line set deep into Erik’s face.

The incredulity in Erik’s question was enough to quiet the righteous anger in Alex’s mind. The pain of what Charles had endured, what they had all endured alongside him, remained but he no longer felt the need to lash out. Charles looked up at Alex, at the guilty flush on the teen’s pale skin. He opened his mouth to respond, to lapse into damage control mode, but he never got the chance to speak. Alex had said all he needed to.

Hank, on the other hand, had not.

“The bullet you ricocheted damaged Charles’ spine,” he replied, cold and clinically. “He lost feeling in his legs. Once you disappeared, it took us four hours to get off that beach. That’s _four hours_ a medical team could have spent trying to stop the bleeding.”

Raven’s thoughts were a hurricane of distress and outrage. She begged Charles, pleaded him to open the connection between them, to tell her that it wasn’t true, that this was all some sort of sick joke. But he couldn’t, because it wasn’t. She gasped into her hands, yellow eyes bright with unshed tears. Charles made the mistake of glancing over at Erik, and he felt his heart drop in his chest. Erik’s face was white, tension written into every line of his body. He met Charles’ gaze immediately, and his lips parted.

Charles dropped his gaze and frowned, teeth tearing at his lower lip. He felt a stir of something deep within him, something hot and electric, and his body tensed. He had to say something, before it was too late.

He had to do something. _Now._

“Hank—”

“No, Charles,” Hank said dismissively. “They don’t deserve your sympathy, not this time.”

“It’s not sympathy, Henry! It’s _tact_!” Charles cried. There it was again, that pulse.

“ _Tact?_ ” Hank echoed incredulously, a snarl stretched wide across his simian lips. “How is _tact_ supposed to help erase our memory of the ten or so hours we waited for the news that the damage to your spine was irreparable, that you’d likely never walk again? How is _tact_ supposed to help us forget the months of physiotherapy we watched you endure, for muscles you couldn’t even feel anymore?

“Why do they, the ones that _abandoned you_ , get to walk away scot free when we, the people who stayed, are reprimanded for wanting to protect you? In what time, what reality, what _universe_ is that fair, Charles? Please”—he motioned to the warehouse at large and added, sarcastically—“enlighten me.”

Unbridled fear seized his heart in a vice-grip and squeezed as anger, thick and oppressive, coursed through him. He tried to keep it down, to temper it with reason, but the walls closed in on all sides. As a telepath, he couldn’t help but react to the emotions of those around him. He held a fragment of each person’s surface feelings in his thoughts, but the rest was all him. The anger he felt was his, and it was utterly terrifying. He lowered his gaze to his hands, coiled tightly in his lap. Not even the smooth drag of Erik’s clothes against his skin could stop the thick, black tendrils of anger from leaking in.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Hank, and I only wish I was deserving of the trust you’ve placed in me,” Charles said through clenched teeth. “But how _dare_ you disclose private information about my injury without my consent!”

Hank flinched, began to apologize but Charles—Charles wasn’t done. He pinned him with a look.

In the periphery of his vision, Charles saw Raven’s head snap back at the raw, twisted anger in his eyes. She stepped forward but hesitated, identifying where the others did not that something was very, very wrong here. Charles never lost control. He couldn’t afford to.

Her mind was frantic.

Charles wasn’t listening.

“Why should I rally behind one injustice and dismiss the other? What makes what Erik did to me so much more important than what happened a few days ago?” Charles stared at Hank, at all of them, with blue eyes that burned. His face shuddered, and crumpled. He felt frantic agony crest in the back of his mind, and choked on a sob. “What I saw there, what they did—to them, to _me_ —what they _unleashed_ …”

Charles wiped his eyes in frustration, only to stare at them in horror when they came back red, slick with his own blood. He lifted his head, pale and clammy, to stare imploringly at the crowd before him. Tears rippled from his eyes, carved clear paths down his red cheeks.

His body trembled. Horror bloomed in his chest, clawed up his throat where it bubbled out into a garbled mess. “They roam the fields, destroying everything they touch and you’re worried about your _FEELINGS?!_ ”

The anger in his chest exploded. The pain was so acute, so severe, that it drove him blind. Nothing else but delirium could explain the sudden onset of light that spewed forth from his hands and crackled in the air all around him. It trickled down his face, licked at his skin. It was energy in its purest form, energy that siphoned his fear, his rage, his agony until there was nothing left but heat.

Charles felt the fractures in his mind dismantle and repair. He jerked forward, his vision clearing, even as the light had yet to fade. Raven was stricken, ready to drop, but her wide, terrified eyes never wavered from his. Azazel was by her side in an instant, seizing her arm. Hank and Alex’s faces were twin images of shock and awe. Erik twitched in fits and starts as he attempted to reconcile what he was seeing to what Charles had told him. Moments, four of them, and which one was this?

“Oh,” Charles breathed. “ _Oh._ ”

He took in the forks of white-blue lightning that encircled him, that _emanated_ from him. Then he lifted his gaze to search the crowd. Erik watched him, rapt, an expression of wonderment that only intensified when Charles’ eyes fell on him. “I remember now.”

He did. He remembered.

Every last moment and all the missing pieces, snapped back together to form a whole.

He had only one thing left to say, the only thing he _could_ say. He pleaded with his eyes, in hope that the look would convey to Erik all he needed to know about what had happened, what was about to happen. Charles felt the gradual decline of his own consciousness and unlike before, he understood it perfectly. “I’m sorry, my friend. But I have to go now.”

Erik’s head jerked up and his eyes widened. “Charles!”

Charles never heard the words that followed, or the desperate way in which Erik pushed past the white, fragmented light in order to reach him. He shut his eyes, felt something deep within him splinter and break. Without even a second of doubt, he surrendered to the power that surged forth from within. He knew everything in that instant, and then he knew nothing at all.


	3. The Missing Pages

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if it's obvious from reading the first few lines, but this entire part is one big flashback, starting from Charles' abduction to his (mysterious) escape. Just in case anyone needs a warning for that.
> 
> Warnings for implied torture, beatings, psychological trauma and a snarky doctor also apply.

They took him in broad daylight.

Charles had been out on recruitment, a special visit for a special girl. Ororo Monroe was en route to Westchester with Sean and Hank, sleeping soundly in the car, the sun shining high and bright in the mid-afternoon sky. Charles had lingered behind to cover their tracks with Ororo’s foster home and repair the damage done by Amahl Farouk, a fellow telepath who had forced him into battle on the astral plane. Farouk’s body had died, but Charles could sense that his astral form still lingered. His priority—Ororo—taken care of, however, he’d given his mind time to rest and recover in New York City before following them home with Alex. He’d let his guard down, elated over their win.

It had been a mistake.

He was reading in the hotel lobby, waiting for Alex to retrieve his bags, when they arrived. There were six of them, dressed in sharp, black suits. One of them, a burly fellow whose first name Charles later discovered was William, gripped the metal handles on the back of his chair and wheeled him outside. He gave a broad smile to the receptionist as he passed, to lend to the appearance that everything was as it should be. Charles reached out with his telepathy, seizing their minds in an instant. Except that while holding them all and sending a warning to Alex was easily done on a good day, Charles was still recovering to the psionic damage he’d sustained in the aftermath of Farouk’s attack. He anchored himself into four of the six men’s minds but was unable to affect the other two.

William stopped where he stood, having succumbed to the sudden and unbelievably persistent urge to cease and desist. The three men at the rear also turned and left, heading towards the coffee shop at the end of the street. Charles steeled in preparation of seizing the remaining two men when he felt a prick in the side of his neck, sharp and cold. He opened his mouth, caught in a gasp of surprise as the needle’s contents emptied into his bloodstream. He succumbed to the drug in an instant, and was just able to send out a garbled message to Alex—GET OUT NOW—in the nanoseconds he had before he went down. Except… he didn’t go down at all.

The drug did nothing to his state of consciousness. Charles remained perfectly aware of his surroundings. William returned, taking hold of his wheelchair once more. They moved towards the end of the footpath where a black panel van awaited. _With government license plates,_ Charles noted, with some trepidation. He’d suspected as much. What he didn’t know was how they had found him. Unless…

_Farouk._

Farouk, also known as the Shadow King, had the ability to possess others. What stopped him from possessing the body of a government agent and informing their supervisors that they’d discovered a lead on a possible threat to national security?

It didn’t explain everything, like the drug they had given him. It was part paralytic—Charles still wasn’t used to the lack of feeling in his legs, let alone the rest of his body—part suppression. Mentally, he felt no different. Except his telepathy was gone.

William laced his arms through Charles’ armpits and his fingers together across his chest like a belt. Then he lifted him. Charles was nothing but dead weight by then, but this didn’t appear to bother the agent in the slightest. He catalogued that piece of information for later. If the government had developed an anti-psionic drug, what was to stop them from developing one that actually _enhanced_ strength as opposed to stripping it away? Either that, or Charles wasn’t giving the man enough credit.

He was placed in the back of the van, arms tied together in front of him. Another thing he found curious, as it indicated that there was a certain amount of time before the paralytic would wear off, and that these men weren’t entirely certain when that was exactly. He only hoped that the same held for his telepathy. If he could bide his time, get it back, then perhaps this would be nothing but another short detour in his travels.

He bemoaned the loss of his chair, sitting forlornly on the footpath outside the hotel. His view of it was blocked suddenly by the slamming of the two back doors, his attention flying elsewhere as one of the agents slid into the driver’s seat and inserted the key, twisting it. The engine roared to life and the van pulled out into the evening traffic.

Charles remained alert for the entire journey, the only impediment his distinct lack of telepathy. Whatever they’d injected into him had suppressed his abilities entirely. Just as he’d suspected, the feeling in his upper body returned after an hour and a half of terrifying numbness. He would never be thankful for his paralysis, but he understood now that events could have turned out much, _much_ worse.

They drove and drove, the van possessing no windows except at the front and Charles was tied down in the back. He grunted, twisted and pulled at the rope knotted tightly around his wrists, but to no avail. The rest of his senses remained perfectly clear, heightened even by the lack of psychic noise. It was utterly bizarre, alternating between frightening and liberating, though the experience as a whole rested firmly on the shoulders of the former. The only thing he could be grateful for was that it was him and not Alex who had been taken.

He worried briefly for Sean, Hank and Ororo, but he didn’t know anything for sure and was determined not to let his mind linger on things he could not change when there were contingencies to be made. It crept in, in the seconds between heartbeats, and when the silence became unbearable, the car oppressively quiet but for the hushed sound of their breathing. He cursed his naivety, his pride and his legs. He cursed the small, fractured voice in the back of his head that told him that none of this would have happened if he’d just followed Erik. If he’d followed his heart instead of his head. Charles shook it off vehemently. It was too late for ‘what ifs’. It was too late for anything but submission.

Submission, but not defeat.

He had a school to build, after all, and his students weren’t going to teach themselves. If it was his newest goal in life to make sure they had a home to go back to, free of the CIA and any files they may have on him and his X-Men, then that was his business. His and nobody else’s.

Charles found his centre, body at a standstill as he honed in on everything he had seen when he’d looked in the minds of the four government suits. His eidetic memory might have been facilitated by his telepathy, but part of it ran deeper than his genes. Part of it was all him.

The world around Charles fell away into obscurity. He shut his eyes for an evanescent moment, and when he opened them again, was transported to somewhere completely different. He reacted sluggishly, to the point where he considered the fact that it might not be that the drug was inhibiting his mutation as much as it was slowing down the area of his brain that controlled it. He knew enough about the mind and the science behind it to realize that as a people, they really knew nothing at all about how their minds worked.

It was another of life’s many mysteries, and one he wasn’t too keen on solving anytime soon.

The place he was in, a landscape of his own devising, was a library of sorts—one that wasn’t limited to just books and newspapers like it was in the corporeal world, but information of any kind. It was a memory technique, one he’d started using as a child to keep up with the sheer amount of physical, technical and sensory data he was receiving from the real world, his own mind and the mind of others. He walked towards a shelf in the far, right corner reserved for the day’s events which had yet to be catalogued, to be taken and dissolved into the archives.

He wasn’t able to ascertain much, his captors having had the element of surprise and the drug, which had worked well enough as to corrupt majority of the information he received as well as transmitted. The book he withdrew from the polished, wooden shelf was thin but durable. The text inside was a neat script of facts and observations, memories and impressions. He thumbed through the pages, scanning entire segments in an instant, until he found what he was looking for.

They were taking him to a base a few hours outside the city. Charles was irritated to note that it was in the opposite direction to Westchester County, but decided it was for the best. The further he was, the further they were, too. _They_ being the CIA, he discovered with interest, reading on. Agent Drake took point on his arrest. Charles identified him as the man who had been steering his wheelchair and placed him in the van, understanding at once that he was both dedicated and fair, possessing a moral compass that too many CIA agents went without. He thought of Moira immediately, of her poise and skill. She had been an excellent agent, entirely undeserving of the hand fate had dealt her. That Charles had contributed to that fate disturbed him still, but he couldn’t atone for it if he was dead.

Agent Drake— _William,_ his mind supplied—had been under strict orders to incapacitate him with the F-4 experimental sedative. The agent didn’t know what it did, or why they wanted him to use it on Charles in particular, but the way he’d assumed control over his mind only cemented the idea that Charles was dangerous and in need of detaining as soon as possible. That simple observation unsettled him in a way that blind hate never could. William Drake was a smart man, well-aware of the situation, if a little fuzzy on some of the details. More than that, he was a _good_ man. His thoughts on apprehending Charles were straightforward. There was no history of hatred towards him or his kind. There was only duty, and the idea of protecting those who couldn’t help themselves.

Charles closed the book, set it aside. He left the library feeling strange and jittery, a feeling that persisted long into his journey and faded only when the van stuttered to a halt, his silence shattered by the sound of footsteps echoing quick across the tarmac.

The van doors swung open. A black bag was thrown unceremoniously over his head, pulled tightly by an unseen hand. Charles was pulled from the vehicle and into a chair, hands still roped together in front of him. His telepathy showed no sign of returning, even though the sedative wore off hours ago. That worried him, even more than his current situation. It was hard to stay calm, especially in such silence. He resisted the urge to retreat to the library, choosing to do the exact opposite instead. He focused hard on his remaining four senses, determined to write to memory everything he smelt, touched, heard and tasted. It was his hearing that held the most potential, so he strained his ears to listen.

He heard nothing but the crunch of gravel underneath the wheels of his chair, the steady breathing of the agents on all sides of him and the frantic, almost explosive thrash of his heart against his ribcage, the beat of the blood pumping through his arteries.

He already knew all it could tell him—they were on their way into a covert CIA base, he was completely surrounded and he was alive.

For now.

- 

There was an edge to the blackness, Charles discovered, that made it crisp and clean. His fingers traced the wall behind him, worrying into the cracks and slivers he found there. Relief blossomed to life in his chest at every imperfection he came across, every fault in the rough, concrete surface of his cell. The thought shouldn’t have comforted him—he was, after all, being held against his will—but it did. Walls were what defined a cage, gave it reason and purpose. Now, they were Charles’ purpose.

He had nothing else to work with, for the darkness was so absolute it was impossible to determine what stood a foot away from him, let alone the danger that lie in wait outside. There could have been a single man, an armada, or a single man with the strength of an armada. But to lose hope would be to lose the very essence of who he was, and Charles would prefer to die than allow that to happen. Hope kept him moving, even when his legs refused to respond to the commands he gave them; it kept him searching, for a single light among thousands, as familiar to him as his own mind once was; and it kept him strong, strong enough to fight the injustices that befell his people without causing irrevocable harm to the human race—their _ancestors_ —who had the exact same right to live as they did.

They would call upon him soon; he felt it in his bones.

But it wasn’t the only thing he felt, or didn’t feel.

His telepathy had yet to return. That or the CIA had discovered the material to create a room like Shaw’s which, considering that they’d beached his submarine and left it there, wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. In fact, it seemed more likely than anything else he’d come up with. They wouldn’t risk simply isolating him. He’d never disclosed the range of his telepathy, nor any of the other pertinent details they would have needed to establish a safe perimeter. He didn’t believe that the drug—the CIA’s experimental F-4 treatment—was in his bloodstream anymore. It had to be the room, embedded in the walls, in the lining of the cage. It had to be.

That they’d silenced it for good was not an option he was willing to consider. He was _not_ powerless, not physically and certainly not mentally. He couldn’t lose hope, couldn’t let the thought of living in the silence of his own mind frighten him into submission. He didn’t want to fight, but he would if he had to. There was a difference between fighting and fighting back. He wouldn’t hurt anybody, not if he could help it, but he wasn’t about to let them hurt him either. The recall techniques he’d applied as a child granted him near photographic memory and apart from its suppression of the x-gene, the F-4 did nothing to impede his normal brain function.

When they came for him, and they would, Charles wouldn’t struggle. He’d do nothing of the sort. He’d go quietly, as silent as the dead. He wouldn’t move, he’d barely breathe, but in his mind he’d commit everything he saw, heard and felt to memory. He wouldn’t stop until he found a weakness to exploit. There would be one, there always was—a flaw in the design, like the cracks in the concrete.

He had a plan.

The line of tension in his shoulders relaxed but didn’t disappear, not entirely. Just because he had a plan didn’t mean he’d succeed. Just because he had the will didn’t mean he had the stamina to back it up. But Charles knew, deep down, that the possibility of failure wasn’t the reason why he couldn’t relax. It was something else, something far more sinister.

Charles’ heart stuttered at the thought. His body trembled as if reacting to an invisible presence, a threat he could feel but couldn’t see. The air was heavy with it, and he took more and more of it in with every breath. He took it in and it lingered there, even after he exhaled, even after his lungs rattled and wheezed from the lack of oxygen. It was thick and unrelenting, that knowledge. Because he _knew_. He didn’t have to see, didn’t have to hear, didn’t have to theorize or deduce. He just knew.

In the silence of his own thoughts, with nothing else to distract him, the feeling came through loud and clear.

There was something very, very wrong with this place.

- 

Three days.

It took three days for them to approach him, three days of absolutely nothing before they saw fit to seek him out. Charles’ body was cramped and full of knots, having spent his nights propped up against the concrete wall of his pitch-black cell. He was damp with sweat and something else, something he didn’t even want to think about let alone confront. But the stench was everywhere, thick and pungent, seared into his nose and mouth. He’d retreated to his library on and off again, unable to spend another moment in the rotten cesspool that reality had become. In the end, however, his body started to rebel and he passed out from dehydration. When he woke, he found that he couldn’t go back. There was no supply to cover the demand, no energy to facilitate the transition from one state of mind to the other. He’d lost his focus, his center was gone, and the only thing that allowed him to distinguish between waking and dreaming was the roiling, searing pain in his stomach as his body made its discomfort known. His arms had erupted in pins and needles, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before his torso was numb. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t _think._

Three days, and the door opened.

The light was devastating. He shut his eyes but it still burned—a deep, angry red behind his eyelids. It licked at his face like fire, even as the temperature itself remained unchanged. He heard a grunt of displeasure as the smell hit the nose of whoever had been sent to retrieve him, but it didn’t appear to have deterred them if the hands scrabbling against his skin were any indication. They fisted the sweat stained fabric of his shirt and pulled him up. He swayed forward, unable to do anything but follow as he was dragged across the length of his cell.

The snick of wheels against the smooth, polished floor crashed against his ears. Except for the rumble of his stomach (which had stopped eventually) and his sharp, ragged breathing (which had only stopped sometimes) he had been trapped in total silence. The world was impossibly loud and overwhelmingly bright; his brain spun into overdrive to interpret what his ears were hearing and his body was feeling. He felt no triumph at being out, no sense of relief. He was hollow, as dark and dank and empty as the cell he’d left behind. He felt nothing.

Charles drifted. Snatches of sight and sound broke through the haze and lingered, but never for too long. They dissipated in the air around him the moment he reached out to touch them, fading back into the heavy fog that polluted his mind. He must have fallen asleep—or passed out again—for the next time he opened his eyes to the world around him he was restrained in a hospital bed. Everything was white and sterile. There was an intravenous drip inserted into his arm and the air was cold and clean. His upper body was sore but better and he could feel the fog in his head receding. As it proceeded to vanish, so did the white noise that sounded all around him.

“What the _hell_ were you thinking?” said a low, angry voice. Charles turned his head to the side and searched blearily for the source. A tall, dark-haired man in navy blue scrubs stood off to the side, speaking harshly to a short, heavily built man in fatigues. His voice was accented, like Charles’. British. “He was in the early stages of hypovolaemic shock when your buffoons brought him in! He could have _died_.”

“Orders from up high, sir,” the other man replied immediately with a sneer, appearing to take immense pleasure in the fact.

The doctor scoffed, loudly. “Taking orders over simple human decency, Major Donnell? You set such the example for your men.”

“He ain’t human,” his partner—Donnell—spat. “He’s a freak, one of those normal-lookin’ ones that worm their way into your ‘ead.”

Charles watched the play of emotions on the doctor’s face with a curiosity that overcame his exhaustion. The man looked frustrated and weary, but also oddly offended on what Charles realized was _his_ behalf. He strained his ears to listen.

“Perhaps,” the doctor said quietly, looking thoughtful. Donnell smirked, as if he had already conceded to the point. Charles watched, stunned, as the doctor added in the same, considering tone, “but considering that there is nothing in your ‘ead’ to begin with, you should be fine.”

The smirk disappeared.

As Donnell spluttered, the doctor cast his eyes over the room. His face lit up at the sight of Charles half-turned in his bed. He walked across the room in a few, brisk steps, clipboard in hand. The grin he wore counteracted some of the deeper lines around his eyes that spoke of late nights and stressful work. He winked at Charles as Major Donnell stormed off in a huff.

“You didn’t have to do that,” said Charles, once he’d left. “Thank you.”

The doctor shrugged, giving him a throwaway smile. “I didn’t do it for you. Irritating Frank just so happens to be one of my favorite pastimes.”

Charles contributed it to his loss of telepathy—which, admittedly, he’d used as a crutch in social situations for quite some time before it had cost him Erik’s friendship and Raven’s trust—but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get anything out of this man. No nuances, no tells. So he said the only thing that he could in such circumstances. The truth. “I can’t read you.”

Looking up sharply from where he was recording Charles’ details onto his clipboard, the doctor snorted. “I doubt you’ll be reading much of anything right now.” At the surprised look on Charles’ face, he added, “I know all about your telepathy, Professor Xavier. I’ve been studying up on you for quite some time, actually. I admire your work, even if we have found ourselves on opposite sides of this crusade.”

He set down his clipboard, ran a hand through his short, dark hair. “I’m going to be honest with you, Professor,” he began, sobering a little. He perched on the edge of the bed. Charles did what he could to clear some space for him, but the doctor simply waved his hand. “After I’m finished with you, once I’ve deemed you healthy enough, you’ll be moved to a new cell. I assure you, I won’t let them leave you alone like they did before, but I feel like it’s my duty—whatever shred of morality I have left—to warn you that the possibility of dehydration or starvation are the least of your worries. For whatever reason, the experiments they’re conducting here only work on your kind.”

He stared at the place where Charles’ wrist was shackled to the thick, metal railings of the bed. “Mutants, am I right?”

Charles nodded. The doctor shook his head, face contorting as if he’d just seen something particularly awful. Charles didn’t doubt that he had, except it wasn’t here. It was all in his memories, in his mind.

“I am a great man, Professor Xavier _._ Not a good one.”

It was in the silence that followed that he finally found the strength to speak. “It’s never too late to change, my friend.”

The doctor looked him square in the eye. His neatly parted hair was beginning to splinter, strands separating from the whole, catching on his forehead. His eyes were wide and honey-brown. Try as he might, Charles could not find the wickedness this man spoke of in their depths. When he had said the words, he truly meant it. He hoped at least a shard of his sincerity showed on his face. By the way the doctor turned, aghast, to stare into the distance, it had. Charles hummed to himself, and asked: “What are they doing here, Doctor?”

The other man shook his head, looking desolate and so very small. For somebody who had appeared so very confident earlier, it was a complete turnaround. Charles wasn’t particularly surprised by it, though. If the tightness around this man’s eyes was any indication, it had been a long time coming. “They’re building a weapon, against the single, strongest threat against the United States.” His gaze flickered to Charles.

“Ah,” Charles gasped, realizing. “Us.”

He nodded, deeply unsettled. “You. Your people. Your kind. Except they’re not as nice with their words as I am. When I was first drafted here, I agreed with them. I still do, to an extent. Everybody has a breaking point, Professor. Even the most rational man can be undone, and with the type of power people like you possess? It doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.”

Charles sensed something else, lingering on the tip of the man’s tongue. “But?”

The doctor sighed. “But the people they’ve brought in, the people they’re still bringing in… they’re just that, _people_. When I first learned about this new species, about you, I expected to see monsters. Power-hungry, blood-thirsty monsters. There’s a girl here whose entire body is covered in scales, except for her chest which has actual fur. Her name is Lucile. Or, it was. Do you know what the kicker is, Professor?”

He had an idea, but Charles shook his head anyway.

“She was more human than half the men stationed here,” he finished, smiling bitterly. “She didn’t ask for it. She was born that way. They found her in the sewers, living off what she could steal each night without being discovered. She hadn’t seen daylight, not truly, until she came here.”

“What happened to her?” Charles prompted, gently, once the conversation had tapered off into silence.

An expression of pain passed over his weathered face. “They sent her to section F, research facility 4.”

Charles bit his lip. He was unsure how much he should reveal to the doctor, but his curiosity won out over caution. Besides, he appeared to know a lot about him and his ability. He doubted it would come as a shock to him to learn that Charles had already heard the term F-4.

“F-4,” he repeated, “where the inhibiting drug came from?”

He nodded. “Section F-4 is where they discovered and manufactured the drug. The reason why they threw you in that cell for three days was so they could make more of it. That cell is the only place that was built with the same metal alloy found on the Caspartina in Cuba and they didn’t have time to build more. Once they found the drug, determined what it could do, they brought you in.”

“Was it developed exclusive for telepaths?” Charles asked, in an attempt to glean as much information as possible until he was shut down.

“I think you know I can’t answer that,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twisting upwards into a crooked smile.

“Can’t fault me for trying,” he said, by way of explanation. With one line of conversation shut down, Charles set his sights on another. “I can’t keep calling you ‘the doctor’ in my head and you seem to know all about me already. What’s your name? When did you move to America?”

The doctor pondered this deeply, not the nature of his answer but how much of it he was allowed to reveal.

“I moved earlier this year, actually, after reports of the strange happenings in Cuba made their way to our little corner of the world. I followed my brother—he’s a Brigadier in the British Army. He has a penchant for these things. We both do.” Pride and love bled into his face at the thought of his brother. Charles wondered where she was now, but decided against asking. “My name is Doctor Alistaire Stuart. I’m not _officially_ a medical doctor—my passion is science—but I am experienced enough in the field for them to bring me here.”

“You say you have a penchant for these things. I assume you mean extraordinary circumstances?” Doctor Stuart nodded. Charles saw this and frowned. “Tell me then, Doctor. What is it about this place that scares you so much?”

The other man’s body froze all of a sudden, and Charles pursed his lips. He waited, patiently, for the answer he knew was coming. The answer Doctor Stuart believed he deserved to hear. “What they’re doing in there. It’s not—” he swallowed, loudly. “It’s not natural.”

Charles leaned forward slightly, wishing more than anything that he could read his mind just for an instant.

“I don’t know what it is,” Doctor Stuart continued, voice strained. “I swear to you.”

“But you’ve seen it?”

“Yes. Yes, I have,” he affirmed. “Just like you will, Professor. Only your visit to section F will be permanent.”

Charles studied the thin, crisp sheet splayed over him. He worried at a loose thread there, picking at it. “So I’m to die, then?”

“No,” Doctor Stuart said, suddenly. Charles’ head snapped up in surprise, face contorting into a look of confusion. The doctor looked stricken, the way he’d only seen when he’d brought up the other mutant—Lucile. “Not death. Something far, far worse.”

With the conversation dead and buried, he withdrew from the side of Charles’ bed and began to enquire after his health in a clipped, clinical tone. Charles didn’t bother to hide his disappointment, though Doctor Stuart wasn’t receptive to it anymore. He couldn’t help but feel betrayed, however, when the doctor appeared to fast-track his treatment, injecting another hit of the F-4 drug into his veins. They’d spoken of what was to happen to Charles in that cell and he’d thought for a moment that—

No.

He recalled what the doctor had said. He was a great man, as evidenced by his knowledge and conversation, but he was not a good one. Even still, something within Charles called out to him. Something within told him that this assessment was wrong. It wasn’t until hours later when he’d been given a clean bill of health and designated a cell that he understood why.

Major Donnell met the two of them in the infirmary, glaring down at Charles in his flimsy plastic wheelchair with a look of thinly-veiled disgust. “He’s been given one of the upper cell blocks,” Stuart told Donnell, who sneered. As they spoke in whispered tones, his beady eyes flickered down to Charles, appearing more incredulous each time he glanced back to see him sitting there. Perhaps he expected him to spontaneously combust, Charles thought dryly. He was sorry he was unable to oblige.

“I ain’t babysittin’ him all day,” the army man complained. “If he needs to shit, it’s on you to clean him up, Doc.”

Doctor Stuart fixed him with a glare. “Your men will go nowhere near his cell block, not after last time. I want Drake and his guard on it.”

Donnell looked torn between distaste at being ordered to do something, and glee at not having to watch over Charles. Glee won out, face erupting in a sardonic smirk. He levelled it at the both of them. “Then I guess you won’t be needin’ my services after all.”

Charles glanced over at the doctor, to see that the other man’s anger was almost palpable.

“Frank,” he said on a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Nobody needs your services. Ever.”

“Whatever ya say, Doc.” Donnell levelled one last, withering glare in Charles’ direction. Then he turned and left, a spring in his step.

Charles was watching after him intently, mind racing, when after a sudden tug he was being propelled forward. He looked up to see Doctor Stuart pushing at the plastic handlebars on the back of his wheelchair. Charles straightened in the chair, trying his hardest to relax and failing, miserably. “Where are we going?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

“We’re _supposed_ to be going to section B, the cellblock where you’ll be stationed. The cellblock pumps the F-4 drug in gaseous form, something they hadn’t set up when you’d first arrived,” Stuart said, eyes fixated on the elevator at the end of the white and otherwise featureless hall. He waited until the doors had slid open and they were safely inside before he spoke again. “But we’re taking a little detour first.”

The doors drew shut. He swivelled the chair around to face it then reached over and pressed a button—a button with the letter F on it.

“To section F,” Charles observed detachedly, feeling dread trickle slowly into his gut. “Where I am going to be sent to a fate worse than death.”

It was a statement, not a question. By the sound of the sigh that emanated from behind him, Doctor Stuart understood this.

“You don’t need to know what’s in there, Charles. You need to _see_ what’s in there. Nothing will happen to you so long as you’re with me. If you see it, you’ll understand what you’re facing and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to fight against it.”

The door’s slid open. Charles wasn’t wheeled out straight away, however. Instead, his companion walked around the circumference of the chair to kneel before him, meeting his eyes. “No-one else has survived,” he whispered, drifting into Charles’ personal space to speak without being overheard. Charles felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the look of total devastation on the man’s face. “Not even Lucile.”

Doctor Stuart— _Alistaire_ , Charles thought, thinking of the way that the doctor had spoken his name only moments before, the unspoken barrier they appeared to have crossed—leaned in even further. “The men stationed inside are loyal to me, but they run on a circuit. As long as I’m with you, you’ll be safe,” he said, lowly. “If they ever bring you here without me, that’s when you should be worried.”

Charles took in the deep brown of his eyes, the flick of his hair and the hundreds of tiny lines etched into his worn-out face. He looked tired. He looked defeated. He looked exactly how Charles felt, everything he didn’t have the luxury to feel right now.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Charles nodded, choosing to remain silent. He didn’t trust his voice not to waver.

Alistaire stood and walked back around to grip the handle of Charles’ chair. He wheeled him into the corridor past the threshold of the door, where any and all similarity to the previous levels faded immediately. Charles was taken through a gunmetal hallway, with several blast-resistant doors stationed on either side. The one they stopped in front of, however, took pride of place at the end of the hall.

Charles stared up at it, aghast.

Airbrushed onto the door was a letter, followed by a single, numbered designation.

F-4.

The blast-proof door swung open with a deep, reverberating hum. Charles held the arms of his wheelchair in a vice-grip as Alistaire led them past the threshold and into the small, sterile room connected to the main hangar. The feeling that something was horribly wrong intensified with every push forward. It clung to him like a second skin, impossible to shake. He was all but powerless in this place. His only protection was the doctor behind him and a pair of guards who stared them down on the other side of the room. Their presence didn’t comfort him at all.

The corridors branching off from the room were narrower, due to the fact that there were three of them as opposed to earlier, where there had been only one. They proceeded down the second corridor, in the middle, without any hesitation whatsoever from his entourage. He filed the information away, tentative all of a sudden. The doctor had been there before. He’d said as much, but Charles didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust _him_.

Not yet.

The next set of guards merged with them as they moved towards the heart of the complex. One man took the lead while the other brought up the rear behind Doctor Stuart. The air was oppressive, their party stoic and silent. Charles felt a weight in his chest, compressing as the seconds passed and there was no end in sight. A low buzz of panic ran in currents underneath his skin. It drilled to the bone and struck marrow, leaving him with an itch that couldn’t be scratched. It ached like nothing else.

Charles’ eyes flickered to the left, head craning up to follow the line of the wall. He brushed an errant curl off his face and buried his fingers in his hair. The cuffs of Alistaire’s white laboratory coat were visible on the periphery of his vision as he directed the chair—and Charles—towards an ominous-looking room at the end of the corridor. There was no door, only a transparent plastic screen with the designation F-4 printed in red block letters on its surface. In smaller print, like an afterthought, it said: <b>Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point.</b>

They slowed to a stop until the guard in front turned on his heel and waved them through. After a second’s delay, Alistaire heaved on the chair, rolling it through the screen. It parted in the very middle, splitting the hyphen between F and 4 into two. Charles grimaced at his head being the first thing to cross over, but his annoyance spluttered and died at the sight before him.

He wasn’t afraid to admit it. His jaw dropped.

Alistaire’s hand fell heavy on his shoulder. The doctor advanced until he was beside Charles rather than behind him. He looked down at the same moment that Charles wrenched his gaze away to stare up in a mixture of abject horror and total amazement.

“Are you beginning to understand now?” he asked, solemnly. “What this could mean?”

Charles swallowed, shook his head. “Not at all.”

Unbidden, his eyes flitted back to the glass screen before them. They were on an observation deck of sorts, a raised platform that overlooked the main hangar. When they entered, before the staggering sight transfixed him, Charles had spied crude elevator doors on either side of the room. He presumed they led to the floor below, the very heart of sector F-4.

He rolled his chair forward by gripping the wheels on either side. Alistaire didn’t move to stop him, not even when Charles raised his fingers to press gently against the glass, just underneath the railing. “What is it?” He spoke softly, tentatively, as if he was afraid of the answer. By the frantic beating of his heart in his chest, Charles realized that he actually, honestly _was._

The sight was, in a word, unreal.

A nebula of red-black energy pulsated within the hangar, dizzying in its proportions. Its outer reaches were sheer and wispy and constantly in flux, tentacles of dark flame flickering in the air. Its core burned hard and bright in a vicious, angry red, primed to explode at any given moment. At the base of the room, Charles could see personnel in hazmat suits surveying the area with radiation wands. They were tiny, dwarfed by the sheer size of the roiling cloud. There was a metal construct of some sorts to one side of the room, which Charles registered as an attempt at a crane. It was half-built, a piece near the top being slotted in by a pair of workmen who seemed totally immune to the wonder of the view behind them. How long had this been here? How long had the CIA been conducting these tests on this—whatever this was?

Most importantly, what did this have to do with the mutant race? What did this have to do with _him_?

“It was discovered on accident,” the doctor replied at long last, turning to face Charles. “Truth be told, we don’t know _what_ it is. So far, it’s been utterly harmless to whomever has come into contact with it—that is, except for mutants. Your kind. Another unfortunate accident, although most of the workers here don’t see it that way. For some unknown reason, whenever a mutant has been introduced to the energy field you see before you, they’ve reacted in varying degrees of agitation. Some experience a brief spell of aggression, others—”

“Others appear to lose their mind completely,” Charles finished, and sounded surprised that he did.

Alistaire raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question this. Charles didn’t provide an answer on how he knew, because he didn’t have one. Perhaps it was the darkness that lingered hot and heavy on his skin, the underlying feeling that something about this entire situation was fundamentally wrong. Perhaps it was something else entirely. But laying eyes on the scene before him, Charles didn’t doubt for one second that if he were put in that room, he would react in precisely the same way. For a moment, he was glad for the block on his telepathy. Whatever this would do to it—and to him—would be like lighting the spark that started the fire and he wasn’t prepared for that, not now. Not yet. He didn’t think he ever would be. But if Alistaire was right, they would be experimenting on his ability, and they would start soon. Charles was incapable of trust in this place, but he knew one thing. Without this man’s intervention, Charles had absolutely no chance. He might still have no chance, but at least he would be facing it—whatever _it_ was—on his own terms, and with a degree of knowledge that his predecessors hadn’t possessed.

It didn’t cause his heart to beat any less ferociously in his chest, nor did it quite the voice in the back of his mind that whispered _wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, it’s all wrong_ ; a voice that only chimed louder the closer he drew to the mysterious power in the middle of the hangar. The one thing it did give him was the ability to balance the terms of the next meeting, whenever that might be. He had no idea how or even why that would help. Maybe it wouldn’t. But he relaxed nonetheless. Awareness could be the first step to preventing whatever had driven his fellow mutants to what he assumed was insanity. Awareness could be the first step to finding his way home.

There was a second question that blazed away in the forefront of his mind.

“So Lucile, she…?” Charles trailed off.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

Charles swallowed. He’d known the answer, of course, but it didn’t make it any less difficult to hear. “And you think this will help me?”

“Charles,” Alistaire said with a softness that made Charles’ eyes fly immediately to his. He sounded hopeless and resigned, but certain at the same time. “You are the only one this will help. If anybody has a chance of defeating this thing, of turning the tides against them—god help me, against _us_ —it’s you. There’s nobody else. There _can be_ nobody else.”

In a far-away corner of his mind, Charles registered that he was nodding. He didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything. His mind raced, tore through possibilities, every meaning, every conceivable definition of the words the doctor spoke to him. There was no glory in what he found, no respect or worth. There was only the void, made real before him, gyrating in varying shades of red and black.

It gathered on his tongue, thickened as he stared at it in awe. He tried to swallow it and, when that didn’t work, choked it down. It tasted like smoke and copper, cinder and rust. Like ash and blood.

Like fire and death.

-

It was on the sixth day, when they could no longer hide his recovery, that Charles was taken.

It was inevitable. He couldn’t hide behind Doctor Stuart forever, no matter how hard the man tried to shield him. He’d bought himself two days by being violently ill after their visit to the research chamber. Alistaire’s face was drawn when he registered how little time they truly had.

“When they realize you’re healthy, _that’s_ when they’ll begin.”

Charles gathered his wits about him as best he could in the allotted time. There wasn’t much hope of escape, not without his telepathy. For all his sway, the doctor had no solid information on what they were doing to the mutants, beside the fact that the drug they’d injected into Charles was a compound taken from the mysterious field of energy. Even less comforting was the knowledge that every mutant who had come to stay with Alistaire post-treatment had died, or was taken to a different part of the base for further experimentation.

It appeared the CIA had a drug that incapacitated him after all, for he lost consciousness in seconds. When he woke, it was to a harsh, white light in his eyes. He tried to move his arms, only to find them pinned by his sides. Restrained, then, like before.

Somebody craned over him, blocked the light with the back of their head. Slowly, the figure’s features solidified above him. Charles didn’t recognise the man, but the white lab coat and wraparound plastic glasses suggested he was part of the research team, a scientist. The man took his pulse and tightened the restraints around his wrist. Long, gloved fingers danced across his skin in small, fleeting touches as the buckles drew flush against him. His actions were cold, clinical and entirely impersonal.

Charles coughed. His throat was on fire, the glands tender and raw. To swallow felt like choking down razor-blades, an acute throb every time he drew in a breath. He wouldn’t push his luck by trying to speak. His captor didn’t seem like the negotiating type.

“The subject is awake,” the scientist said, to somebody at the edge of Charles’ vision.

A second man responded, gruff and impatient, “Flush him with the antidote and let ‘er rip.”

Charles drew in a sharp breath as the stretcher he lay flat against straightened, so that he hung vertically. The restraints around his arms and legs held him in place, but barely. He felt the pull immediately, an uncomfortable strain on his wrists. His vision cleared to reveal the ground floor of the F-4 research chamber. The hangar loomed large in front of him, the fourth wall of the tiny examination room made entirely of glass. Through it, Charles could see the lower half of the energy field as it shaped and reshaped itself in the space all around it. It was so much bigger from a lower vantage point, and all the more frightening.

He tore his gaze away in time to see the scientist ascend a short platform to a control panel and pull a lever back towards him. The stretcher shuddered to life with a metallic hum and carved a straight line across the floor, drawn inexorably forward as if by the weight of an unseen hand. It was a mechanism, he realized, initiated by command. He was reminded rather suddenly of Hank, who had become his second in command at Westchester, and wondered if he was well. If he would continue to be well once he was gone. Hank had loved to create such things, conveyors and pulleys to help Charles adjust to his new life as a paraplegic. The mechanism moved seamlessly, not in fits and starts like he expected. But then, nothing about this place was what he expected.

The window in front of him parted all of a sudden, right down the middle. The sides retracted into the panes on either side of them. The path now clear, his stretcher pushed on towards the billowing, red and black mist. He watched in stunned awe and absolute, sickening dread as it overcame his field of vision entirely, until it was all he could see on either side of him.

He breathed in, terrified, through his nose. His teeth were gritted in anticipation of the pain that had yet to come. The air around him was pungent; the acrid smell of smoke and sulphur overwhelmed his senses. It carved a path down his throat, lines of fire that pooled in his lungs. He considered the taste that lingered in his mouth the last time he was there, ash and blood and fire and death. This close, he was surprised he hadn’t choked on it yet. But the taste was surprisingly bearable.

The wait was not.

When he finally breached the cloud of crimson and shadow the mechanism ground to a halt. The scientist was by his side in an instant, a breathing mask affixed to the lower half of his face. It hadn’t even occurred to Charles that the energy field might cause respiratory problems, hadn’t even thought not to take it in. It was too late now. If the air around him was toxic, it was already in him.

The scientist raised an object in his hand. It was a hypodermic needle, filled with a blue liquid that looked incredibly dangerous. In a single, fluid motion, the man lowered the needle to his neck and stabbed him with it, pushing down to eject the contents into his bloodstream. Pain, ice-cold and piercing, shot through his body. It encompassed everything it touched, a vicious sting that sent him reeling.

When at last the ache faded, something else surged up in its place:

_‘The antidote to the inhibitor will begin working any moment now...’_

_‘...am I really making the right call here?’_

_‘...wish this bastard would hurry up already...’_

_‘...twenty seconds of delay before the shroud reacts to his presence. There isn’t much he can do in twenty seconds, mind control or no, and once it has a hold of him there’s no letting go...’_

_‘...wonder what it will be this time, what form it will take...’_

_‘...it doesn’t matter. I have to stay strong. For my family. For Maddie and Bobby...’_

Charles’ eyes widened at the trickling sensation of outside thoughts in his head. He gasped as the trickle became a flood. He tried his hardest to rein it in, to stop an overlap, but it was no use. Hundreds of voices spoke in hushed, tangled whispers to him; hundreds of images flashed intermittently behind his closed eyelids; a constant stream of foreign emotion, impression and heat.

His telepathy had returned.

Charles took the mind of the scientist without reservation and used his hands to flip the stretcher back into its horizontal position. He took off the restraints, one after the other, until Charles was free. His eyes were glassy as he pushed on the stretcher until it moved back of its own accord, away from the hangar’s dizzying core. From behind the glass, his superior bellowed. Charles clenched down even hard on his mind in response. When the door refused to open, the man reared back and punched it. The glass shattered, crippling pain coursing up both their arms until Charles tapped into the pain receptors and switched them off. He kicked away the remaining glass.

“I’m afraid your scientist is indisposed,” Charles said dismissively to the man yelling bloody murder into his ears. “Try again later.”

The man gaped openly. “You’ve got to be—”

Suddenly, the abyss contracted and the room bathed in an intense, red glow. Charles watched the spectacle through the scientist’s widened eyes, protected as they were by his glasses. Something shot out of the light—something fast, something black. It was a blur of motion, rippling through the air, headed straight for them. It bypassed the two humans completely and drew to a stop where Charles lay prone on the stretcher. In his surprise, he loosened his grip on the scientist’s mind and the man staggered back with a shout.

Charles opened his eyes, and his world ground to an absolute halt.

A shadowy wraith hung over him, jaw hanging wide and grotesque. Its long, pointed teeth glittered in the flickering light. Around him, the room was gone, replaced by the texture of sand beneath his fingertips and the smell of smoke in the air. Charles craned his head towards the open sea and saw a familiar, almost peaceful sight: boats in the water, the symbol of the American and Russian navies, their hulls cracked and torn. Metal splintered and fell, crashing into the endless blue depths of the ocean. He watched them crumble, watched the fire billow into the cloudless sky, and ran his palms through the fine grains of sand. There was no pain this time, no sadness. There was only relief.

Fingers ran up and down his face, drawing his attention away from the deaths of thousands of men, deaths the rational part of him knew he had prevented. But the details were vague, they slipped away from him as easily as the wind that tugged at his hair and caressed his face; as the insistent fingers drawing nonsense into his skin. His eyes locked with Erik’s, and everything else was forgotten. On his other side, somebody else leaned forward and prised his fingers from the sand. Charles saw Raven out of the corner of his eye, saw the smile that stretched her lips and the cacophony of voices in his head that spoke only of love, acceptance and safety.

Raven’s smooth lips touched his forehead and Erik’s arms tightened around him.

“We’re here Charles,” she sighed into his hair.

“Always,” Erik agreed. His eyes were soft behind the harsh lines of Shaw’s helmet, and there was a smile on his face. It was small but sincere. It was the most perfect thing Charles had ever laid eyes on. He lifted his weak arms to grasp at Erik’s face, to widen that smile—

_“NO!”_

The vision disappeared all around him in a cloud of sand and dust. For a single, horrifying instant, Charles locked eyes with the creature and saw past its hideous, demented face. The soul beneath was the same as its outward appearance, disease and decay in a corporeal form. Whatever it was, whatever it was meant to be, it was long dead. That is, if it was ever alive in the first place.

An apparition, sheer and ghost-like, rippled across Charles’ body like a second skin before it, and the wraith, disappeared into nothing.

In the distance, the red glow faded.

A single, shaking breath and Charles followed.

- 

There was something—someone—there with him. There had to be. When Charles reached out to touch what he thought was Erik, a voice had shattered the illusion with a single, spoken word: _No._ The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d never had that second of clarity that preceded a thought like that. He hadn’t stopped, he hadn’t _planned_ to stop. Something else had stopped for him.

Something else had saved his life.

But what?

Nobody, not even the minds in control of the facility, had the answers he sought. He’d heard the scientists mutter to themselves about how unprecedented it was that whatever had come out of the void hadn’t taken him. Charles shuddered upon hearing the word ‘taken’. He’d had many theories, but one rose steadily up the ranks, facilitated by those comments and the curious way the wraith transformed the world around them into a scenario where Charles would reach out for something. It needed him to make the first move, to reach out and touch _it_ as opposed to it touching him. Only one thing required such ritual.

Possession.

The differences between mind control and possession were few, but of incredible significance. The one that concerned him was this: as a telepath, he could tell people to do what he wanted, but did so from the comfort of his own body. This was exercising control of someone else’s mind. Possession, on the other hand, required complete displacement from the body and to siphon it—the essence, the soul—into another. It was incredibly difficult, nigh impossible, to do so without some form of willingness from the host. The body naturally rejected it, and for the soul there was no other place that felt quite the same as the body it was born in. It clung on tightly to its home.

This thing, this shadow creature, had sentience. It had no conscious thought, it had no soul. It was driven solely by need. But it was alive. Only two possibilities made sense to Charles. The first was that the field of energy had the ability to create these things out of its own material, which was groundbreaking in itself. The second, and all the more frightening, was the possibility he’d entertained when he first heard the name the scientists had given it. They called it the shroud. He proposed, as the second option, that rather than being a source of energy, the void was just that—a shroud, a curtain suspended in the air, a connection point between here... and _there._

When they threw him into a cot in another cell, the one that had been designated to him, Charles didn’t have the energy to fight them off. He slept, deeply, and when he wasn’t sleeping he replayed the encounter over and over and over. Every time he reached the part where reality returned, his eyes caught on the ghostly luminescence that stretched across his skin and vanished the same time the creature did.

He studied the bewildered, terrified look on his own face. Then he started it again.

-

It was early morning on the seventh day— _a week,_ Charles thought detachedly, he’d been there for an entire week—when they returned. They ordered him to eat, ushered him into a chair and made the trip down to section F in absolute silence.

His telepathy was gone again, thanks to a fresh dose of the F-4 drug the night before. He wondered if they’d risk negating its effects again, and why they’d done it the first time. Except he already knew the answer to that question. For whatever reason, the void only reacted to mutants. Suppress the x-gene that caused those abilities to manifest and the reaction wouldn’t occur.

Charles was transferred to a metal chair bolted to the floor. He couldn’t help but think they’d have to recreate this entire base from scratch if they ever hoped to contain Magneto. Everything in the lower levels was lined with metal, from the gigantic, blast-resistant doors to the metal fixtures in the ceiling. It would be no match for Erik’s electromagnetism.

He wondered, not for the first time, if Erik knew he was gone. If he even cared, or would let himself care if he did.

Charles didn’t see the barrel-chested man enter the room until his fist impacted with the side of his face. His head snapped to the left as it hit him square in the jaw. He touched the side of his face and watched in incredulity as the man cracked his knuckles loudly. Blood filled his mouth and Charles choked it down, the metallic taste sealing his throat. The element of surprise was lost, but the flurry of punches that followed was brutal enough to compensate. One to the head, three to the ribs when he held his hands up in defence and Charles felt a piercing pain in his side as something deep within him fractured. A third strike to the face and his nose exploded with blood, jetted down his face in a warm stream. The cartilage couldn’t stand another hit and neither could his ribs.

The man surveyed his knuckles, glistening with Charles’ blood, and grinned manically.

He threw his entire body into the next punch. Charles threw his hands in front of his face, burrowed his head into his shoulder and gritted his teeth. The force of the impact was breathtaking. His wrist bent back and an unnatural angle and the torrent of pain that followed drilled down to the marrow. He collapsed forward, one hand clutching the other, blood dribbling from his open mouth onto the floor.

Charles struggled to regain control of his body, but it was no use. He jostled his fractured ribs every time he breathed and the resulting surge of white-hot agony winded him completely. Nausea cramped his stomach as the world spun around and around and around. The roar in his ears was deafening, second only to the vicious throb of his wrist. He lingered on the very edge of consciousness, wanted nothing more to meet it with open arms, but it disappeared when the man laced his fingers through Charles’ hair and wrenched his head up violently.

Pain blossomed across his cheeks like a brand, unrelenting in its heat. Charles clenched his teeth in anticipation of what was to come.

“LOOK AT ME!”

Charles was startled into compliance. The man’s face, white and furious, crystallized in front of him. The focus must have returned to his eyes somehow, because he grunted and released him. Charles’ chin slapped down to his chest, but he snapped his head back up an instant later.  He didn’t know if the order still stood, and he wasn’t about to risk disobedience on the off chance that it didn’t.

The man circled him once and, satisfied by what he saw, headed towards the door.

He knocked, and it cracked open.

“He’s all yours.”

A scientist, a woman, entered the room. Her hands brushed the broad shoulder of Charles’ torturer as she passed. She knelt down in front of him and gently brushed the hair out of his eyes. She took his pulse, tested his responsiveness with a pocket flashlight, craned her head around and nodded. The man charged forward and gripped Charles’ shoulders in his heavy hands. He heaved Charles forward, ignoring the way he flinched violently in response, and slung an arm across the back of his neck. The other laced through his knees, something Charles saw but didn’t feel, and the man’s muscles flexed as he lifted him bodily in the air. His nerve endings alight with crippling pain, Charles could do nothing but allow his head to loll as he was transferred from one room to the next.

They set him on the stretcher, buckled him down and pushed it to the edge of the shroud where he lay for twelve hours. With nothing else to do, Charles counted each and every second that passed. The black-red tendrils of smoke lapped gently at his face, too insubstantial to cause him any pain. He was on high alert, searching for any sign of the black, shadow-like creature. It never came.

The sharp agony dulled into a roiling throb that still hurt unimaginably, but was less distracting than its counterpart. He nearly relapsed, however, when every muscle tensed at the sound of footsteps on the hangar’s smooth, concrete floor.

The woman from before appeared at his side, her pretty, Asiatic features grim in concentration as she leaned over him with a familiar looking needle in her hand. Charles swallowed the terror that curled on his tongue, forced it to remain within as she emptied the needle’s contents into his neck. His body reacted to the injection immediately, as it had before, ice flooding his veins. He was numb to the pain this time, but the barrage of thoughts still caught him off guard.

She soothed him with a low sound, palm gentle against the side of his face.

“Do not struggle,” she whispered. “It will all be over soon, I promise.”

It was a lie, all of it. But Charles felt his body relax under the soft touch and the lyrical sound of her voice in his ear. He retreated into his mind, allowed his face to grow slack and unresponsive. He wouldn’t lash out again. Not only did he not have the strength, he’d learnt from his mistakes. This time, he put all his power into strengthening his shields. When he done all he could, he stopped and waited.

He knew the precise moment it had loosed another of its shadows upon him, for the walls of his library shook. The structure held admirably and Charles bent down to retrieve the few books that had fallen off their shelves. He slotted them back into place, hands brushing down their spines. He wouldn’t give them the pleasure of seeing him break, because he wasn’t going to break. Not this time.

-

Charles sat in the hollowed out shell of his library and watched as its foundations crumbled. Shelves splintered and cracked under the pressure, crushing the books underneath. Loose pages fluttered to the floor. Others burned where they lie.

The monsters from the void sidled up to the door and clawed at it with hands and vicious, pointed teeth. It was only a matter of time before they broke through and destroyed his mind the way they destroyed his body, inch by agonizing inch. They’d already penetrated his outer walls after working at them for two days solid. He’d be proud of how long they’d held, if he didn’t think it was the last thing he’d ever achieved. With his telepathy focused solely on his shields, he couldn’t hope to stop them.

Charles bowed his head, considered what little options he had left.

“Your death would be most unfortunate, Charles Xavier.”

Charles stood on legs that shook as the library faltered, determined to face whatever came for him head-on. He searched for the source of the booming voice and found nothing. This was a trick. It had to be. So why was he still searching?

“We’ve met before, you and I. In the Fade, when the demon lured you for possession.”

The voice, he recognized it. It had spoken once, in a memory Charles played over and over in his head. He looked up to the ceiling, at the cracks embedded deep into the surface. They wouldn’t hold much longer, and neither would he.

“You saved my life,” Charles said to the air around him, unable to pinpoint where it was coming from. It seemed to emanate from everywhere, like his own voice did when he spoke directly into someone else’s mind. Was it possible that it was outside, external to him?

The voice observed, in a tone devoid of judgment, “You ask many questions.”

“You provide no answers,” Charles countered.

“That is correct,” it said, closer now, as if it were right behind him.

Charles turned on a whim, expecting nothing.

It wasn’t nothing.

Whereas the wraith—or, as the voice had called it, _demon_ —reflected a core of darkness and shadow, the being in front of him was made of light. Back in the chamber, the apparition had settled over him like a shield, and it was only now that he realized how apt that description was. The light coalesced into a moving suit of armor, though Charles saw no sign of a man underneath. It was strange. The fine artisanship of the breastplate glittered and gleamed, but the moment he stepped back to observe the suit as a whole it became translucent. Charles reached out tentatively and pressed his fingers along the edge. The metal was smooth and cool where he ran a hand over it. He pushed further, and the surface disappeared entirely. When Charles looked down, half his arm had disappeared into the being’s chest.

He pulled back immediately, eyes blown wide. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.”

“If you believe there is metal,” the voice said from the general vicinity of the suit’s helmet, “there will be metal. Likewise, if you believe there should be nothing, there will be nothing. It is of no consequence, it does not harm me.”

Charles felt his body relax. “Glad to hear it.”

“Yes,” the armor confirmed. “You are.”

“How are you here?” he asked, excitement and caution warring for dominance in the pit of his stomach. On one hand, the mysterious force that had saved him had returned and might be able to come to his aid yet again. On the other, he had absolutely no idea what it really was.

“I am here,” it answered, “because you are suffering. I am here to end that suffering.”

Charles lifted his head, and felt proud when his voice didn’t waver. “By killing me?”

“I have told you before, Charles Xavier, that your death would be most unfortunate,” it said.

“By… saving me?” he amended uncertainly.

The suit of armor—it had to be a ghost or some kind of spirit, Charles thought—bowed its head in the rough equivalent of a nod. It was the oddest, most amazing experience. One moment, it moved soundlessly. The next, Charles could hear the drag of metal on metal, every minute sound he’d expect to hear from someone wearing such armor. He recalled the spirit’s words.

_If you believe, there will be._

- 

“Why won’t you tell me?” Charles asked what felt like hours—like _days_ later, tone bordering on desperation.

The spirit answered sadly, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

There was a history in those words, a history Charles wasn’t sure he wanted to touch. Except that he did.

“Tell me anyway,” he urged.

It drew in a sharp breath, and began to speak.

- 

Charles opened his eyes to the gyrating nebula of crimson and shadow. He came to in stages, consciousness returning slowly. His body throbbed in an overwhelming state of shock and pain. Suddenly, however, he wasn’t alone. The female scientist studied him with wide eyes as she staggered over to the stretcher. Charles wondered what she saw. He hoped it was a reflection of her mistakes. Of all their mistakes.

“Y—you have to stop,” he croaked, voice hoarse from disuse.

The expression on her face hardened. “Why doesn’t this work on you like it did on the others?”

Charles tried to clear his throat, only to erupt in a hacking cough that lasted a good half a minute. His lungs burned, his face was stiff and numb, but his voice was stronger.

“Take me to the doctor and I’ll tell you,” Charles bargained weakly.

She shook her head. Her long, dark hair caught the air, billowed around her face. “I could make you tell me. You’ve met my friend.”

“You beat me any further and I’ll die,” Charles said firmly, without a shred of hesitation, “and then you’ll never know.”

-

Alistaire’s eyes boggled at the sight of him as they entered the infirmary. “Out! All of you!”

The guards, part of Donnell’s team, began to protest until the doctor’s face adopted a pinched look that promised to inflict unimaginable pain on the next person who defied him. If Charles wasn’t neck-deep into shock at that point, he would have laughed.

He gave it his best shot anyway and was told he looked awful. The doctor’s phrasing was a bit more colorful than that, but Charles didn’t think it bore repeating. Doctor Stuart set his wrist back into place, every second word out of his mouth a curse except when he spoke directly to Charles. It was utterly bizarre, almost like watching two separate people at work. Alistaire was firm but kind with him, and barked at everyone—and everything—else. Charles learned that his ribs were fractured, his nose was bruised and he was very, very lucky that neither of them were broken. If they were, the doctor had remarked, he wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near as long as he did.

To his credit, Alistaire was nothing but professional. Charles knew he must have been fit to burst with questions, but it was only when he was pumped full of the strongest painkiller the infirmary had on hand that the other man sat down beside him and asked.

“What happened?”

Charles swallowed. The doctor’s face was haggard. Telling him would inflict an even bigger burden on his shoulders, but Charles hadn’t requested to see him just for treatment. There was something he needed to say and for everything Alistaire had done for him, answering a few of his questions on the way was the least he could do.

“What you saw in F-4, it’s not an energy source or a weapon or anything you thought it was,” said Charles. He watched the play of emotion on the doctor’s face as it changed from surprise to relief and made a complete one-eighty into suspicion.

“It’s a doorway to somewhere… not here, except it isn’t quite as simple as that.”

Doctor Stuart huffed. “It never is.”

Charles smiled, but the expression was strained.

“I’m afraid not. This doorway—it’s an aberration, a tear. What we saw in that hangar was a physical manifestation of that tear. It’s called the Veil, which implies that you’d be able to cross over it. This has been proven, only not on our end.”

“Wait. Are you trying to tell me that what they have in there is some sort of gateway?” Alistaire asked, incredulous.

Charles nodded.

“And that something has _come through_ that gateway?”

He nodded again.

“Jesus,” Alistaire put his head in his hands, scrubbed his palms over his face.

"When we visited the first time, you told me that the mutants appeared to lose their minds," Charles said suddenly.

Doctor Stuart raised his head, eyes bloodshot. Charles wondered what he was thinking about and decided it was probably Lucile. She was the mutant who had touched him the most. There was something almost desperate to his grief when he spoke of her, as if he knew there was more to it, more than he knew. He wondered what she had become in her final moments—twisted, deranged.

Possessed.

“You were right,” he continued softly. “Sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” the doctor snapped. Charles allowed his frustration to roll off of him. It wasn’t personal.

“The mutants lost their mind not because of what they saw or endured, but because they _literally_ lost them. The creatures that come out of the Veil don’t live very long without a body. For whatever reason, they only react to mutants. They have the power to ingrain themselves in your mind, to draw you out by using your dreams and desires against you. They present you with what you want more than anything in the world, whisper the right combination of words in your ear so that _you_ reach for _them._ Then they take you, own you, possess you.”

Alistaire’s eyes pierced his. He searched for something on Charles’ face, anything to refute what he was hearing. He found nothing.

“How do you know?” he asked, visibly distraught.

“I know because they tried to do the same to me,” Charles replied.

“‘Tried?’” Alistaire echoed. He honed in on the most important part of Charles’ explanation immediately.

Charles smiled at him wearily and said, “Tried and failed.”

He dropped his hands into his lap, used the uninjured one to stroke the tightly wrapped bandage around his wrist. He didn’t feel it, not anymore, but a phantom pain still lingered. When he spoke, it was to the sure stroke of his thumb over the bruised skin.

“Exposure was ineffective while the F-4 was in my bloodstream, so they gave me some kind of fix for it. I tried to escape by using my telepathy on the lead scientist but was blind-sighted by what passed through the Veil. I was so surprised that I let go of his mind, that’s how frightening this thing was. I almost succumbed to the vision, but managed to get a hold of myself before it was too late.”

“When it didn’t possess or kill you…” he trailed off, motioned to Charles’ battered body with one hand.

Charles nodded. “I’m afraid so. They seemed to think that breaking my body would break my spirit. It only made me more determined to fight against it. Instead of lashing out at them, I shielded myself in my mind. It worked for a while, until I started getting weaker.”

Alistaire side-eyed him. “How long was ‘a while’?”

He picked at the hem of his sleeve and avoided meeting the other man’s eyes. “Two days?”

As predicted, he spluttered.

“Two days? They kept you under for _two days_? And you survived?”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Charles said dryly. He took no real offense to it, because he had asked himself the same thing. “But yes, two days. After which I had nothing left to lose, so I came back and told them that if they wanted answers as to why I was different, they’d have to bring me here for treatment first. When they saw how serious I was, they complied.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“If they’re going to take you back, why did you come here?” Alistaire asked, then did a double-take. He scrubbed a palm over his face. “That didn’t come out right at all. Of course I’m glad you’re here, you know that, I just meant—”

Charles laughed, though it was a humorless sound. “It’s fine, really. It’s a legitimate question. I guess I came here to warn you.”

“To… warn me?” his face twisted in confusion. “Why? What for?”

“I know, Alistaire.” Charles said. He watched the other man seriously, watched the way he straightened under the weight of his gaze. “I know why you’re here, what you’re doing. What you did for me, and how it would have cost you everything if they found out.”

He breathed deep, and took the plunge. “I know about your brother, and I know you were wrong.”

Doctor Stuart stared at him, speechless. He didn’t attempt to deny what Charles said, or to demand where he heard it. They both knew it was true. Instead, he latched on to the only part of his statement that he didn’t understand.

“Wrong?”

The smile that crossed Charles’ face was small but sincere. “You told me once that you were a great man, not a good one. You were wrong.”

“No,” Alistaire replied, “I wasn’t. I let it happen, to Lucile, to the others. God, Charles, I let it happen to _you_. I let them take you down there to be—to be _tortured_ , how can you turn around and tell me that isn’t wrong? No good man would ignore such a thing. You can’t tell me that you’d do the same in such circumstances. We both know you wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t,” Charles agreed. “But then, I’m not like most men, now, am I?”

The doctor sighed as if he already predicted Charles would miss the point completely.

Charles patted him on the arm with his uninjured hand. “I think you know me well enough by now to understand that I’ll continue believing you’re a good man regardless of what you think of my assessment.”

The doctor scoffed, and Charles laughed. Then, his face grew clouded.

“I came here to tell you that this place won’t be around for very much longer, and to get out while you still can. I don’t care how you do it—just don’t be here tomorrow. In a few days, I want you to contact Dr Henry McCoy. He’s an associate of mine. Tell him I told you to call, that you’re a friend. Tell him about your brother, what you know about the men holding him, and he’ll be able to help you. Hopefully by getting you into contact with me, but if not there are other ways to get you what you need.”

“Charles, what are you—?”

“Please,” he urged, fingers tightening around his wrist. “Alistaire, trust me. You _do not_ want to be here tomorrow. I’m not—despite what they did, what they’re still doing; I’d never do anything to hurt these people. However, I have to close the Veil, before it’s too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this place when it does, or in the event that I fail. Talk to Agent Drake, tell him a fraction of what I told you and I guarantee he’ll want to help. Get yourselves out, tonight if you can. Do it as soon as possible and don’t— _don’t_ look back.”

Charles leaned forward the best he could and met Alistaire’s wide eyes with calm determination. “Promise me.”

He didn’t relent until he heard him reply, “I promise.”

The doctor settled back into the chair by his bed with a sigh and watched over him in silence until Charles lapsed into sleep.

When he woke the next morning, he was gone.

-

“I’m ready.”

“You are certain?”

“Yes,” Charles winced at the tremor in his voice. He repeated, firmly this time, “ _Yes.”_

His words met nothing but silence and he sighed, deeply. When he spoke again, it was from a place within him he rarely ever ventured, a place of pain and fear. “I know what this means, for the both of us, but it’s the only way. I can’t go through that again, I just—I can’t.”

The spirit coalesced all around him. If it had a mouth, Charles thought it might be smiling. If it was capable of such things.

“As you wish.”

The core of its being pulsed in time with the rapid beat of Charles’ heart in his chest. It pressed its fingers to his cheek, the smooth metal of its gauntlets a cold drag against his skin. Charles opened his mouth to speak, to ask it what the next step was, but a bright flash of light inundated him. It suffused his skin, trickling into his eyes, his mouth and his nose until it was all he could do not to breathe it in. A thousand colors he never knew existed blossomed to life in his field of vision; the roar in his ears that persisted since he first laid eyes on the Veil crystallized into an orchestra of sounds, harmonious and absolutely, awe-strikingly beautiful. Tears cascaded freely down his cheeks, until they too were swept away in the flood of all-consuming light. He was lost, alone, bathed in the purest white he had ever known.

Then, the white faded, and Charles wasn’t so alone anymore.

-

Veins of light, cracked and blue, fought for dominance against the pale skin of his forearms. Charles blinked, as if shutting his eyes and opening them again a fraction of a second later would erase the light from existence. It didn’t, and he swore. It wasn’t the light or the implications behind it that disturbed him—he knew full well what was causing it, had consented to it even—but the possibility that others might see it, see _him_ , like this. While he didn’t care for their opinion, the startling of the guards was the last thing he needed right now.

“Amongst other things,” he said to himself, as a wave of pure, unbridled _urgency_ lapsed over his mind. His new companion had discovered its bearings at last and, unaccustomed to the limitations of a human host whose every move it could not control, demonstrated the exact scenario Charles had hoped to avoid with the rest of the complex.

It began to panic.

 _‘I DO NOT UNDERSTAND,’_ the deep voice in the back of his head boomed, loud enough to make him flinch. A bolt of displeasure shot through their collective consciousness. Sensing it, the voice quietened, sounding almost sheepish when it said, _‘This is most unsettling.’_

Unsettling didn’t even begin to cover it, but he’d be a fool to patronize his new friend. The light tattooed into his skin was a stark reminder of just how powerful it was, and when his legs started to stir beneath him of their own accord for the first time since the beach at Cuba, lit as his arms were with that strange, preternatural energy, Charles felt faint. There was a short tug of confusion from the recesses of his mind, and it echoed on his face in a frown. The feeling of having someone else take control of your body, render you immobile and play—not the fun kind of play, either—was completely bizarre and bordered on terrifying. Charles felt as if ‘unsettling’ was possibly the weakest, silliest word to describe such a thing. Mind-wrenching, petrifying and debilitating were all much better adjectives and not even they came close to explaining it. It was absolutely unthinkable, except for the part where it had already happened.

His legs stabilized beneath him, and with a consideration Charles had thought beyond it, his wayward companion restored feeling to him in stages. Tears prickled at his eyes when, instead of pain or numbness, the slow burn of exertion rushed to meet him. The spirit’s bemusement deepened, as did the frown on Charles’ face. _‘Has this offended you in some way, mortal? It was not my intention, but it will be nigh on impossible to liberate you from this prison while you are still bound so intimately.’_

“No, it—it’s fine,” he croaked, voice straining against the sudden lump in his throat. He drove the heel of his palm into the hollows of his eyes, wiping at the moisture that had gathered there. Neither of them mentioned this particular reaction, and Charles was grateful for it. “We have a lot to accomplish. We’d better get to it.”

The presence in the back of his head acquiesced immediately, having grown tired of being helplessly imprisoned in their cell. Charles was pleased to surrender the finer points of his motor control, allowing him to sink into a sensation not unlike the grueling weeks of physiotherapy he’d been required to partake in to prevent atrophy in his legs. One thing he knew above all else was that the mind could only take so much strain at one time, and he had well exceeded his limit when he accepted help from the mysterious, powerful force that had answered his call. Charles knew it had been a reckless decision, made in a moment of fear, pain and anger. He knew he would regret it. But then, in that moment, he had ceased to care— _anything_ was better than being left to rot in a prison of his worst nightmares, fed by his own thoughts and memories in an unrelenting, vicious cycle. Anything, even a half-life at the mercy of a higher being, whose ideals would inevitably clash with his.

Unwelcome and unbidden, his mind flitted to Erik, which set his new friend ablaze with a combination of surprise and interest. It pretended to be above such trivial things but Charles’ penchant for discovery must have impacted a lot stronger than they’d realized. At least, that was the explanation the two of them were settling on. The thought made Charles smile where his memory of Erik had not and, for the first time, he was glad that the spirit had chosen him to inhabit. The rage and agony that lingered within Erik, that drove him to commit such acts against their human kin, would be all the more frightening if combined with the strength and determination of his associate. It would be unlikely, however, that Erik would even consent to such an intrusion, considering how fiercely protective he was of his own privacy, and for good reason. Charles would never consciously manipulate Erik in any way, regardless of how greatly he wished that his friend would see the error of his ways, but he could not know if he would do it subconsciously, or in moments where his desperation won the battle against morality.

_‘You would hold your feelings for this man above achieving the greater good?’_

The question disturbed Charles in more ways than one, for it picked away at the very heart of the matter. How far would he go to preserve the friendship between him and Erik? How many lives need hang in the balance before he’d act out against him? There had been too many that day on the beach—Charles had _felt_ their helplessness, the fear that dwelled low and heavy and all-encompassing in their hearts. They had been terrified, shocked and awed and completely undone by what they had seen. In that fear they reacted, and had all but sealed their fates. In Erik’s eyes, at least. Charles wondered, absently, if Erik would have spared them had they not attacked. It worried him that he could not divine an answer to that question. That he didn’t know.

“It depends on the circumstance,” he said, replying to the spirit’s earlier question as opposed to the one he asked himself. He sighed, only to huff a laugh seconds later when he realized that he wasn’t the only one lost in thought. His legs propelled him across the length of his cell, keeping speed with the jump between thoughts, a brisk pace for a difficult conundrum.

Recognizing the connection between Charles’ amusement and its actions, his body stilled instantly and his companion sent a questioning tendril of thought at the feeling, rescinding it once it understood.

‘ _You believe that my endurance in pursing our goal is inclusive, and that the act of moving without direction belies this fact,’_ it stated, without offense. When no response was forthcoming, it added: ‘ _I have simply allowed time for you to adjust your focus before moving forward. Is this not what is to be done?’_

“No, it’s fine, thank you,” Charles muttered, feeling heat rise to his cheeks at the plain, unassuming way that it defended its actions. Had it been anyone—or any _thing_ —else, he would have seriously doubted the truth behind their reasoning, but it wasn’t so he didn’t.

“I think it’s high time we got out of here, don’t you?”

 _‘Had it been my choice, we would have departed long ago,’_ it said. Unable to stand another flush of indignity at something that sounded like an accusation but really wasn’t—at least, he didn’t think it was, since it required his guest to actually have some sort of understanding of human behavior, which it distinctly lacked—Charles smiled instead.

“You’re preaching to the choir, my friend,” he remarked, the declaration spilling out before he had a chance to think. If it noticed the warm way in which he addressed it, it made no indication. “I couldn’t walk before you took over.”

He refused to say ‘before you fixed my legs’ because he couldn’t allow himself to hope. Not after everything that had happened, the countless months that had passed before he accepted that he would never walk again, the dark depression that had followed and persisted still.

There was no audible or telepathic response to his words, but the slight swell of annoyance that had gathered in the forefront of his mind ebbed away into nothing. The smile on Charles’ face, which had grown brittle and forced, managed to regain some of its sincerity. It remained, even as his body began to move towards the exit; a single, locked door that was near seamless with the rest of the wall, bar the slight indentation where it opened. He raised his hand—a motion sanctioned by the both of them at the same time—and pressed it against the smooth, metallic surface of the door.

Within their collective consciousness, Charles folded backwards, surrendering control of his body. It was one of the hardest decisions he’d ever made, including letting it occupy him in the first place. It hadn’t seemed real, back then, in an addled haze of fury and panic. Nothing had seemed real, lest the benevolent force that offered its aid. The phrase ‘too good to be true’ was appropriate, but it was too late to protest. He had given his consent twice now, and could do no more.

 _‘I will leave if that is what you wish,_ ’it offered, a true sign of its nature. The very idea that it would offer, even after he had given everything to it, was enough to appease the small part of him that cried out in panic. It bolstered him, cemented his resolve.

His companion bowed low and deep within his head, a motion of acceptance and thanks. Then, ensuring that Charles was tucked safely by its side, it splayed their fingers out across the surface of the door and _pushed,_ releasing but a tendril of its might.

The veins of light that emanated from his eyes—which, unbeknownst to Charles, were white with a light of their own—and spread to the tip of his toes grew impossibly bright, painting the cell in an incandescent blue. Then, without any warning, they fractured. The thick lines splintered and broke, shards burrowing further into his skin until they pulsed in time with the frantic beating of his heart, becoming one with his core. Once the light had stabilized, establishing a connection between the source and its host, power, raw and unadulterated, began billowing out across the shining pathway. Charles felt warmth blossom to life in his chest, wild and impossibly bright, filling him until he was fit to burst with it, until he knew nothing but the desperate, carnal throb that echoed the ringing in his ears and the sudden taste of metal on his tongue.

He opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them, and watched in stunned awe as his companion—as Justice—sent the titanium-plated door exploding outwards, careening away from the cell wall and into the hallway, where it impacted with the opposing wall and burst _straight through it_ , showing no sign of stopping as it cut through concrete and steel like it was paper, and all with the press of a fingertip. Even as his body rushed forward, Charles’ mind remained trapped in his cell as he surveyed the falling debris with a look of total incomprehension.

“Oh, my god,” he whispered, giving each word the exact width and depth it deserved in this circumstance. He didn’t know whether to feel anxious, horrified or _excited_ at the display. Despite his better judgment, he was leaning towards the latter.

To his companion, he stuttered: “That… was amazing.”

‘ _A lesser man’s thoughts would turn to greed and opportunity,’_ Justice intoned, beckoning them onward. ‘ _Yours do not.’_

“Were you?” Charles asked, distracted. “A man, I mean?”

‘ _Gender is meaningless where I come from, as is age. I would have easily answered the call of a woman, child or elder if they gave their consent. But if it pleases you, you may address me as you would your fellow man.’_

“It just seems wrong to call you ‘it’ all the time,” he admitted awkwardly.

Justice’s words ignited the spark of curiosity within him, a myriad of questions vying for his attention. Above all, he wondered: why him? Of all the people who had faced the Veil, why was he chosen? If the others were mutants as well, then Charles wasn’t special in the least.

Why him?

‘ _I chose you because you called to me. Your mind carries self-awareness that I’ve seldom seen in mortals over the millennia. You think not for yourself, but for good, no matter who receives it. I’m grateful for this, and for you.’_

Justice stopped where they stood, and Charles sensed a shift in his thoughts.

‘ _You have my word that you will not come to harm, and that you’ll be returned to yourself once the Veil has been repaired. Sleep, Charles Xavier, and when you wake you will be free.’_

The words shocked and touched him in equal measure. In his surprise, Charles acquiesced to Justice’s command without second thought. He closed his eyes, even as they remained open, and drifted into the soundless abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Justice, the Fade, the Veil and the demons all belong to Bioware, in particular their Dragon Age game series. Considering how big a part secrecy plays in the first half of this story, I think most readers can understand why I haven't tagged it. I apologize if this offends anybody.
> 
>  ~~Leonard McCoy~~ Alistaire Stuart belongs to ~~Star Trek~~ Marvel's Excalibur series. He's the only human doctor in X-Men related canon I could find who wasn't a complete asshat. I've taken liberties with his character, filling in whatever I don't know with, well, Bones - aka. the Original Snarky Doctor.
> 
> Due to the rampant sexism of the 60's, I've changed all references to his canon sister, Brigadier Alysande Stuart, to Alexander instead. (If you can find me any loophole that allows her to be a Brigadier in the 60's, I will change this in a heartbeat).
> 
> To whoever notices the extra X-Men tidbit I added in here, kudos to you. ;)


	4. From a Dusty Bookshelf

It wasn’t something he thought or felt, he just  _knew_ —knew as his eyes opened to endless, seamless black that despite all evidence to the contrary, he wasn’t alone. Last time he was subjected to such darkness he’d been blind in every sense of the word, had nearly suffocated under the weight of his own dread. He couldn’t place how, but this time it was different. Charles experienced nothing but the slow onset of peace as it filtered through the air, filled his lungs on the inhale and didn’t quite leave him once he breathed back out again.

He was liberated, free. Not from the past, but from the uncomfortable pressure in the forefront of his mind that had lingered ever since the Brotherhood collected him from the side of the road. It was nothing but a memory now.

A sound echoed in the distance, loud and clanging. Charles strained his ears to listen. It sounded like a name— _his_  name.

“Charles.”

Suddenly, the void around him was awash with color. Charles reached out to run his hand through the thick strands of paint that trailed in the air but they avoided his wandering fingers with surprising skill. The rivulets formed an elegant spiral around his wrist and never once touched him. They pulsated and spun in nonsensical shapes, a dazzling array of blues, greens, oranges and reds. A veil of white-silver-blue trickled down over his face, reminded him of the breathtaking light that suffused Justice’s every movement. That suffused  _his_  every movement now as well. There was no snap or crackle of lightning, but the streaks of color humbled him all the same.

“ _Charles._ ”

The whisper grew more insistent in his ear and the licks of paint suspended in the negative space around his body thickened to twice their original size. It was appropriate somehow that, when Charles couldn’t reach either of them, they were more alluring than ever.

Charles abandoned any hope of touching the grey-green-brown to his left, or the stream of lavender-pink laced tightly under his arms, and focused instead on what he could hear rather than see. The voice arrived intermittently, at first softly and then with urgency as time passed. He waded through the darkness, surrounded by every conceivable hue. Charles tilted his head up—for, if they gave him nothing else, the streaks of color were an anchor around which he could establish a centre of gravity—and pushed with all his might.

He hurried towards what he hoped was the waking world and Erik, whose soft voice spoke circles around him, more beautiful than anything his mind could conjure. He infused as much of his own will as possible into the idea that he would open his eyes and see his friends again.

Charles pushed at the edge of his consciousness a single, final time. The liquid color writhed like a thing alive as he breached the surface, rippled away like the ocean waves as awareness struck him. He shut his eyes to the bizarre sensation, resonating in his chest, his back and the arches of his feet. When he opened them, the world snapped into focus. Only it wasn’t what he’d expected at all.

The hallways were bathed an incandescent blue, an unearthly brilliance that Charles saw reflected on his skin as he pressed his hand to the wall. He walked down the length of the corridor, steps slow and measured. The worn wood of the doorframe was a comforting presence in his palm. He stood in the threshold, surveyed the room and strode into it. There were no cracks in the ceiling, no splintering in the shelves. If not for the ethereal glow that lit it up from the inside out, Charles’ library looked the same as it always had.

His scars healed, his memories returned—but the pain of separation wasn’t so easily forgotten.

His eyes followed the luminescence on the walls as it stemmed and knotted in varying shades of liquid blue. It enthralled him to see them interlace, skitter over bookshelves and weave between desks, projected in the air all around him. He longed to touch them, but knew the instant he thought so that it wasn’t advised. The light was linked to Justice, of that he was certain, but he couldn’t place how. It wouldn’t do him any good to meddle in something he wasn’t supposed to, especially if Justice sought to protect him by it.

In the silence, someone made a small, involuntary noise. Charles turned to face the source of the sound and stopped dead in his tracks.

Erik approached him tentatively, as though Charles would disappear if he moved too quickly. His hair, almost always combed off his face, fell forward into his eyes as he watched Charles watch him. His jaw clenched, accentuated the lines around his mouth, pulled into an unhappy frown. Charles blinked, lips parted in stunned disbelief at his presence. It must have been Erik, then, who was responsible for the cocoon of safety and warmth he felt when he first woke up. He thought it was Justice, but he was more than glad to admit that he was wrong.

Erik watched him carefully in the cold, blue light, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing either. Charles dropped his gaze to the object in Erik’s right hand and, for the second time in so many seconds, felt a rush of surprise at what he found.

“You’re more amazing than you realize,” Charles announced, voice rough as sandpaper. He swallowed, or tried to, but his mouth was barren and dry. “That you’re here at all is a phenomenon in itself. But those—”

Charles motioned to the thick tome in Erik’s right hand.

“Those books are impenetrable to anybody but me or a fellow telepath. Or they were supposed to be.”

Erik stared at the book and then at Charles, intrigued.

“What are they?”

His answer was simple enough. “Me.”

Erik’s reaction was instantaneous. He surrendered the book in his hand to the shelf closest to him and backed away from it.

“You mean, they’re your—?”

Charles’ eyes narrowed. There was something in Erik’s expression that looked suspiciously like guilt, which made little to no sense where this was concerned. There was nothing to feel guilty about; Erik didn’t what the books were and what they meant to him. Unless...

“My memories?” Charles said absently, “Yes, they are. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Erik didn’t have to speak because the tell-tale silence that followed did it all for him. But Erik wasn’t like everyone else. Charles wasn’t surprised in the least when he decided to forgo all awkwardness and murmured, “I guessed.”

“Erik, it’s okay,” Charles reassured him, at a loss of what else to say, and it  _was_  okay.

“It’s not,” Erik retorted immediately. The shame on his face was assuaged by frustration, but it was an anger directed at nobody but himself.

“Erik...”

“It’s  _not_ ,” he repeated forcefully. “It’s  _not_  okay.”

The words sparked something deep inside of him, and he knew.

“Ah,” he said, numbly.

The silence that ensued was fraught with tension. There was a sinking sensation in the pit of Charles’ stomach, and the library took on a darker hue. Erik’s head snapped up at that, the way the walls closed in around them both. It was so easy to forget where they were when everything was so tangible. Charles could never forget, not really, for it was under his own power that he remained, but the moments passed quicker and more painlessly than ever before with Erik there. He barely felt the strain at all.

“I saw it,” Erik confessed. His voice was ragged and distraught. “I saw it, Charles. I saw it all, and I—”

Sympathy and pain drove Charles to interrupt, “I’m sorry.”

Erik stared at him like he was mad.

He struggled to elaborate. “That you had to see that, I mean. I wasn’t at my best.”

The disbelief on Erik’s face bled into a look of complete indignation. “Your be—Charles, do you honestly think I’m upset about that?”

Charles sighed. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

“No, I don’t. It would be so much easier if you were,” he admitted reluctantly.

“You passed out,” Erik continued, quietly. His anger was gone. In its absence he sounded devastated. Forlorn. “You passed out and suddenly, it wasn’t you anymore. Emma was  _furious_ ; she calls it an abomination.”

“He’s not,” Charles said, gently. “He’s not an abomination. You’ll be wise not to mention that to him either. It’s offensive.”

The temptation to ask was painted all over Erik’s face. Charles could hardly blame him. His memories from that time, while accounted for, had yet to be arranged into any kind of working order. For someone to stumble across them without any telepathic background, it would be chaos. Not to mention the nature of the memories themselves. No, Charles didn’t blame Erik at all for wanting to make sense of it.

“In any case,” Erik said, in a conscious attempt to pick up the previous thread of conversation. “She wasn’t happy.”

Charles smiled sympathetically at him. “My companion is certainly... unique.”

“‘I have no name, only the virtue to which I aspire’,” Erik recited.

The smile on Charles’ face went from sheepish to amused in an instant. “Is that what he said to you?”

In contrast, Erik was sombre. Charles tried to mimic the air he projected, but couldn’t. It was clear that, while Erik had experienced Charles’ incarceration as if it were his own, their thoughts on the matter were greatly divergent.

“It said it was a spirit of Justice. It wasn’t surprised you hadn’t told us about it.” It came out harsh, like an accusation.

Charles huffed. “I should hope not. He was the one who convinced me to keep it a secret.”

“So you knew? All this time?” And that  _was_  an accusation, no doubt about it.

“ _No_ ,” Charles impressed. Erik’s brow eased back in confusion, but his eyes remained hard.

Charles dropped his head into his hands, scrubbed his palms over his face and expelled all the air in his lungs in a rush. He breathed into them shallowly until the dark shadows in the nooks and crannies of the room slunk away. When he’d gathered himself the best he could, he pried his fingers from his cheeks. Charles then bypassed Erik completely and made for one of the plush, leather seats in a small corner of the library. He collapsed into it, felt the hiss as the cushions were compressed under his weight.

“Tell me,” Erik said softly. He sat beside him, slung his arm over the headrest and leaned forward.

His thigh pressed tightly to Charles’, a warm presence in the half-light.

“You know how complicated it is. You heard it from my own mouth,  _before_  I remembered. I was protecting someone, the same someone who saved me from dying in an explosion that I may or may not have caused.”

Charles waited long enough to see Erik nod, and the troubled frown that dwelled on the other man’s lips at the words ‘ _that I may or may not have caused’_ , before he continued. “Nothing I remembered made much sense, and that’s how I knew. I knew I’d been tampered with. Emma was right, Erik. The only person who could wipe the mind of a telepath or distort their memories with any degree of success is another telepath. It wasn’t her, so it had to have been me. How do you confront memories that were so terrible, you erased them from your own mind?

“I also knew that I–that I had been harmed. I didn’t have the broken bones or the bruises, but I had the muscle memory. Not even the most skilled telepath can erase a body’s base reaction to certain stimuli. I knew it even if I didn’t remember it and I, I couldn’t—”

Erik’s eyes, when he curled his fingers under Charles’ chin and lifted his head, were very, very blue. Be it a trick of the preternatural glow that played all around them or the unparalleled sadness he felt at Charles’ admission, they blazed. Erik leaned in, hesitancy written into the downward turn of his lips. Charles remained rooted there, giving Erik all the time he needed to make his decision.

His uncertainty burned to ash, left only embers on the outskirts of his expression. His fingertips grazed Charles’ lower lip for an evanescent second before he kissed him feverishly. Charles moaned into Erik’s mouth, the heat that sparked to life between them, a fire of its own right.

When he pulled away, Charles slumped forward to rest his head on Erik’s shoulder. Erik’s fingers massaged into his hair and held him there in a loose embrace. He didn’t want to move. He thought that maybe neither of them did.

“You’re wrong,” Erik said when the silence had trickled on too long.

Charles snorted into Erik’s neck. The sound tapered off into a soft sigh as the hand in his hair continued its gentle kneading. “I’m often wrong about a great deal of things—to which are you referring?”

“You didn’t do this, Charles, at least not all of it.” 

Erik spoke with conviction, which Charles both loved and hated him for. Hate, perhaps, was too strong a word; Charles was jealous of the confidence Erik wielded, even as he knew it had been hard-won and well-deserved. He added, “Did you ever think to wonder how I got here?”

“I assumed Frost brought you here,” Charles surmised with a confused frown. It deepened when Erik shook his head.

“No,” he countered, “though not for lack of trying. Any attempt on her part to connect me to you failed spectacularly. Your friend did it.”

Charles’ head snapped up. “Did he tell you why?”

“It— _he_  was distressed. He said he hadn’t realized that shielding himself from you to allow you both time to recover would cause such a strain on your mind. He said he was responsible for the hallucinations you’ve been having.” Erik’s lips twisted in displeasure at the thought.

“He also said he couldn’t reach you,” he continued, “or that he wouldn’t, because it wasn’t worth the risk of damaging your mind further. That it was the damage that caused you to retreat in the first place.”

Nothing Charles thought to say was good enough. In the end, all he had was the truth. “I was overwhelmed.”

“Charles,” Erik said, and his voice was pleading, desperate. “If I’d known, I—”

He shut his eyes to the urgent tone, watched the inside of his own mind fade to black. That was why he didn’t want to say anything, because anything he  _did_  say would sound like a justification, even when it wasn’t intended as one. But what was done was done.

To Erik, he shook his head and said, gently, “There’s nothing you could have done.”

When Charles chanced a look at Erik’s face, he was taken aback by what he found there. It was an odd combination of shame and disdain, as though what he’d said and what Charles had assumed he’d said were two different things entirely, and now he had something else to regret.

“No, not the facility, though it’s bad enough you were there for a week and a half and I didn’t know about it,” Erik snapped gloomily. Charles fought the urge to flinch at the spiralling anger in Erik’s tone, and reminded himself yet again that it wasn’t him Erik was addressing. The idea that Erik continued to possess so much self-loathing rubbed Charles the wrong way. This was part of Erik he never envied—his confidence was always assuaged by such deep, restless guilt over things that nobody else in the world would ever blame him for.

“I meant what happened on the beach, what McCoy said about...”

Erik swallowed.

“About your injury.”

Three words, and all of Erik’s anger was gone. In its place was sorrow, broad and sweeping and Charles— _couldn’t_.

He was purposefully vague when he asked, “You saw, then, in my memories?”

Erik shook his head. His eyes were twin pools of pain, but the rest of his face was impassioned. “I didn’t see it, Charles, I  _felt_  it. I wasn’t there as a silent observer, I was there as you. I never wanted you to go through that. I never wanted you to experience the agony of being helpless, or the fear. You were supposed to be the ignorant one, the naive one, the one I had to convince of this desolate world’s hatred. But this, this changes everything because it proves that you  _have_  seen, and you  _do_  know... Pain. Anger.”

_Me._

The word went unsaid, but it was the clearest of all.

Charles wanted to address that—needed to address it—but there was something else he had to say first. “I’m not about to break, my friend. I am certain of that. If what I experienced before was a result of Justice’s power returning, of his awakening, then I have nothing more to fear.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he answered, just as Charles knew he would.

He leaned forward, captured Erik’s gaze as tenderly as he would his hand had he extended it and requested, “Tell me what you mean.”

Erik’s face went blank, which Charles recognised as a defence mechanism. It was also a tell—it meant that whatever Erik was about to say was either deeply personal or would hurt. Charles bet on both.

He was right.

“All the reasons I had—that you didn’t understand, that you were incapable of it—are gone,” Erik began numbly. As he continued to speak, however, a spark ignited. “You came face-to-face with evil, both literally and figuratively, and you overcame it. You overcame it and you still believe in your precious little ideals and I’d ask you how except I  _know_  how because I felt it too and I...”

The wall of steel that made up Erik’s guarded expression crumpled inwards and fell. What lay behind it was pure agony, so strong it stole his breath just to lay eyes on it. Charles didn’t know what to say—there was nothing  _to_ say, really, that could even hope to alleviate the pain—but he had to try. Anything was better than sitting in cold silence as his heart bled and Erik’s hardened further.

“Erik—”

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he confessed, in a voice so profoundly miserable that Charles’ body ached to hold him. But Erik had never reacted well to being pitied, especially not by Charles, whose opinion he valued higher than most people’s. He refused to be demeaned by the emotions of others, something Charles had accepted but hadn’t understood before his paralysis. Now, he knew the feeling intimately.

“I can’t—I can’t make this fit,” Erik whispered. “It doesn’t fit.”

Erik was right, but not for the reason he thought. It didn’t fit, Charles knew, because it wasn’t  _supposed_  to fit. Erik was never meant to experience what happened to Charles. If, for whatever reason, this crisis of conscience was preordained, it had to come about of his own free will—not by being on the receiving end of Charles’ errant memories.

Charles knew what he had to do.

“Erik,” he said, carefully, and took Erik’s hand in both of his. He had two reasons to do so: one, because he needed to get Erik’s attention, and two, because he had to establish a physical connection between them if he had any hope of convincing Erik that this was what had to be done, for both their sakes. There was no telepathic manipulation of any kind in the gesture. Just touch.

“I know how closely you guard your thoughts, but if you want—and only if you want, mind—I can get rid of those memories for you. It would be painless, and all of this confusion would go away. You could have clarity again, if that’s what you need.”

Erik looked up sharply, shocked. Then, as Charles’ words sunk in, his expression hardened.

“Unbelievable,” he said, with no tone or inflection.

Charles felt the blood freeze in his veins. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

Erik’s lip curled in anger as he turned his gaze to the middle of the library, where the shadows fluctuated in time with the dread in Charles’ chest. When he spoke, it was low and dangerous. “You have the chance to tell me I’m wrong, to convince me to abandon a cause that we both know you can’t condone, and instead you offer to take that away? What could very well be your only chance to make me see the error of my ways and the reason in yours and you, you—”

He laughed.

The sound shook Charles to his very core, as did the wonder in Erik’s eyes when he said, “You didn’t even hesitate. You just discarded it, like my peace of mind is worth more to you than being right.”

“It is,” Charles said, without pause. “Always. And if that makes me weak, I don’t want to be strong.”

Erik’s answering smile was sad. “It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you better.”

Charles opened his mouth to protest, but Erik shook his head. The smile waned, but the imprint remained. It lingered, just below the surface.

“If every person was like you, Charles. If  _I_  was like you. Except there’s a part of me that is now. I didn’t understand what you meant all that time ago when you told me you knew my agony...”

He trailed off.

“But now you do?”

Erik nodded. His eyes, when they searched for Charles, were bright. “I do.”

That one look conveyed everything he had ever wanted to see, to hear and to feel from Erik. The moment should have been perfect— _deserved_ to be perfect—but it wasn’t. As long as he had his reservations, Charles could never reconcile this with the Erik he knew.

“All disbelief aside, I’ll take them from you without a second thought if you want me to. Before you say anything—” he added, hand raised at the burgeoning look of annoyance on Erik’s face. “—let me remind you that I’m a telepath, Erik. I’ve spent my entire life doing this. Having my memories, seeing what I saw and feeling what I felt, thinking what I thought—it will affect you in ways you can’t imagine.”

“I think it already has,” Erik interjected quietly.

Charles steepled his fingers and bowed his head in thought. He watched Erik through his eyelashes. “All the more reason to remove them. I guarantee that Emma will agree with me. I don’t want my memories to influence your decisions, and I mean  _any_  of your decisions, whether I like them or not.

“I can erase the emotional transference and leave the events themselves. You’ll be distanced from them while still recalling what happened. It’s the best solution I can think of under these circumstances,” Charles offered, a path of light cutting its way across the library towards him. It drew their eye to a section of the library tucked behind an old, oak desk. In that section, he knew, was their solution.

“No.”

Charles’ eyes widened. “Erik,  _please_.”

But Erik had none of it. He stood, fingers slipping from Charles’, and paced the length of the sitting area. When he reached the chair and Charles, he stopped. “If you think this has influenced my decisions, or is capable of it, then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did. I know my thoughts from yours. I know what’s truly mine.”

Charles, while appropriately chastised, remained unconvinced. Judging by the way the determination on Erik’s face faltered, it showed.

His resolve didn’t falter for long. “If you’re that worried about my judgement, I’ll just have to prove it to you then.”

“How?” Charles asked, careful to keep his scepticism in check.

Erik sighed, resumed pacing in quick, short steps. “I don’t know how. I’ll wear the helmet—”

One look at Charles’ face and he raised his hands.

“Or not,” he added, voice strained. “I’m sure to find a way, Charles. What happened to me hardly changed your opinion of humanity.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Charles snapped, unable to hide how frustrated and inexplicably hurt he was by that remark, or the way Erik sounded so sure when he said it. “It  _did_  change me.”

Erik stopped in his tracks.

“Say that again,” he demanded.

“It changed me,” Charles repeated, and pressed on despite the tremor in Erik’s words. “I’ve spent my entire life like this, seeing things through the eyes of others, feeling what they felt. When one is exposed to that for so long, they become almost desensitized to it. I imagine some simply stop caring, while others—others can’t  _allow_  themselves to care. Their minds can’t cope with the level of stress, which is why telepaths have shields around their minds to block most of it out. But when I met you, when I experienced what happened to you, what Shaw did and the years that followed after, it. It changed me. You may not see the change and I may not show it, but it’s there.”

Erik remained silent for a long time. So long, in fact, that Charles looked up just to make sure he hadn’t disappeared like Emma had last time. But no, he was still there, lost in a world of his own devising while seated soul-deep in Charles. His presence was a balm to the torn, cracked edges of Charles’ psyche; the rain after a stiflingly hot day. Charles stood and walked past him, into the library proper.

“And in knowing this, the pain it’s caused us both, would you erase those memories?” Erik asked at long last.

Charles paused by a shelf full of books with bright, colored spines—remnants of his childhood with Raven.

“Never,” he answered, and couldn’t bring himself to regret it, even if it proved Erik’s point in one word the way hundreds couldn’t for him.

“Then don’t ask me to do the same,” Erik countered from behind him.

Charles frowned, still staring at the bookshelf. He ran a hand down one of the hardback novels on the middle shelf. It was titled simply:  _The Davenport Incident._  He smiled, but it was a fleeting thing.

He turned on his heel to face Erik and said, “It’s your mind and your decision, Erik, and I accept that. I will say, however, that if it ever becomes a matter of removing them to save you—personality or otherwise—I will not hesitate to do so.”

Shock bled into his expression, only to bleed out again a few seconds later. Had Charles not been staring right at him, he’d have missed it.

“Okay,” he agreed.

Charles nodded in confirmation. “Okay.”

Luckily, Erik was nothing if not in tune with Charles. They both sensed the need for a change of subject, dove for one when it presented itself. Erik took the opportunity to look around the library, a small smile on his face as the shadow of Charles’ negative emotions flickered out of existence. “This place is magnificent. I can’t imagine anyone else’s mind is this organised.”

Charles was startled into laughter. “No, they most certainly are not.”

Erik’s voice lowered. “And mine?”

Charles looked up to see the teasing glint in Erik’s eye as he regarded him through the rows of books.

“Your mind is... not something I can easily describe, I’m afraid,” Charles answered honestly.

“Is it really that bad?” he asked flatly, looking distinctly unimpressed.

Charles chuckled. Of course he would interpret it that way. “No, not at all. Your mind reflects who you are. In your case, it’s absolutely exceptional. If you’re that interested in seeing it, and don’t mind my hanging about, I’ll show you one day.”

“I might just take you up on that offer.”

Erik’s response was equal parts sincere and flirtatious. He walked the length of the aisle in barely concealed wonder, ran his long fingers down the spine of one of the books on the shelf. The white-blue light danced across the length of the narrow passage, hovered in Erik’s face for a short time and disappeared into the books themselves. He’d noticed them earlier no doubt, as Erik was nothing if not prudent, but there’d been nobody to answer him. Now, however, he had Charles.

Erik looked up at him pointedly as the illumination faded.

Charles scrabbled for a way to explain. “Justice is—renovating.”

It was a particularly awful answer. Charles winced. He hadn’t meant to sound so vague, or dismissing. Could Erik have taken that as being dismissive? One would think, as a telepath, that Charles would have a better understanding of social cues.

One would be horribly, terribly wrong in this case.

Erik surprised them both by laughing. “It looks spotless. What happened to all the—?”

He made a complex motion with his hand, in an attempt to encapsulate the entire library. Charles stifled a laugh at how useless the gesture was. Charles surveyed the room, perfectly whole save the ethereal lightshow overhead.

“I assume you mean the damage?” At Erik’s nod, he continued. “Like I said, Justice is renovating. He did the same thing last time.”

Charles didn’t have to read Erik’s thoughts to know exactly where the conversation would lead to next. It was clear from the calculating look in his eye that Erik was piecing the puzzle together quickly, quicker than Charles had, in any case.

“He stopped, didn’t he?” Erik asked. He pinned him with a piercing stare.

Charles, despite his composure, couldn’t hide the way he flinched at the loaded question.

Erik’s gaze sharpened further. “What happened after the two of you came together?”

No matter how badly he wanted to know, Erik was careful to keep any trace of compulsion from his voice. The question, when he asked it, was gentle and resounded with sincere curiosity and concern. There was suspicion there, of course, and no small amount of apprehension at the answer. He watched Charles like a hawk. Nothing passed by him unnoticed and Charles...

Charles didn’t try to slip away with the help of half-truths. Even he could see the futility in lying to him.

“You saw what remained of the CIA facility, didn’t you?”

Erik hesitated, but nodded anyway.

“Then you’ll understand what I mean when I say you’ll be glad you didn’t witness it, firsthand or otherwise,” Charles answered quietly. The smell of burnt flesh lingered on his skin, as did the sulphuric aftertaste of the Fade.

Charles looked up just in time to see Erik surge forward with unimaginable agility, and draw him into a fierce hug. He made a muffled sound into his neck, pleasantly surprised by the show of intimacy. This was still new for the both of them; there was a vulnerability that hadn’t existed before, a whole new level of tension. Erik twined his fingers through Charles’ hair, pressed his lips to the crown of his head and breathed him in. He murmured something in a language Charles couldn’t quite place, unfamiliar words forming long, fluent sentences in the soft timbre of Erik’s voice. They blurred into sensation, a litany of pleasant sounds in his ear. Charles had never felt so close to him.

Which was, of course, Erik’s cue to go and ruin everything. “I think it’s time to go back now, don’t you?”

Charles hummed in agreement, but wrapped his arms even tighter around Erik’s waist. He burrowed into the other man’s warmth. Erik’s laughter rippled through them both and he argued weakly, “That’s counterproductive, Charles.”

He allowed Charles to cut him off with the hot slide of his lips, and gave as much as he received. Erik kissed Charles like he was drowning, as if every second they weren’t connected he fell further into the deep. He grazed his lower lip with his teeth, massaged it with his tongue; he swallowed down every noise that Charles made, that they made together.

Charles burned for him, for his skin and for his taste. He feared he could not survive another minute without it, without this, without  _Erik._  He feared that it might already be too late, and he feared that he felt no fear at all. He wanted to push until there was nothing left between them, until Erik’s thoughts were his and his were Erik’s. It was a beautiful, impossible, terrifying thought.

“I’m ready,” he told Erik when they pulled apart. Erik smiled at him and Charles smiled back.

Then he shut his eyes, braced himself and pushed. 

-

_‘I apologise, Charles Xavier, for not keeping my promise to you.’_

Charles turned to the suit of armor beside him, Justice’s chosen image, and frowned. “If I recall correctly, you promised me that when I woke up, I’d be free. This”—he motioned to the library around them, safe and intact—“for me, is freedom.”

 _‘Be that as it may,’_ Justice intoned in the same old, profound voice that echoed with glorious purpose, ‘ _I also promised you that you that you would return to yourself once I repaired the Veil. It has been repaired, and yet I am still here, a burden upon you.’_

“You’re not here without a reason, Justice,” Charles reminded him. “Erik told me you were weakened, that my hallucinations were a consequence of you healing. He said he heard these things from you. Is it true?”

‘ _Yes.’_

A smile curved Charles’ mouth. “Then you have done no harm.”

‘ _Thank you, but that is not the only reason I must apologise to you. I must call upon your services once more.’_

His smile deepened. “I know.”

‘ _How?’_  Justice reached out questioningly. Charles filtered the memory through to him, astral fingers curling around the book in his hands.

“I knew even before I remembered,” he admitted once the spirit had returned. “The pieces fell into place long before then. I couldn’t tell why, not exactly, but I sought out my best man and put him on the job.”

_‘Your best man... is not the metal-caller?’_

He chuckled. “The ‘metal-caller’ is special. He also has a name.”

The suit of armor lifted a shoulder in an attempt to shrug, and Charles laughed brightly.

“But no,” he continued, running his hands over the books in front of him. He chased the ghostly light with his fingertips as it darted over shelves and in between volumes. “I’m talking about someone else, my second-in-command so to speak.”

‘ _If you harbor no ill will towards me—’_

“Which I don’t.”

 ‘ _—perhaps we should see what answers the investigation has yielded?’_ Justice asked, as if Charles hadn’t spoken.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said cheerfully.

_‘I don’t—ah, idiom.’_

“This,” he announced with a laugh, “is going to be interesting.”

-

Charles woke.

He groaned softly at the light, pulling a hand up to his face to stop it from filtering in. As soon as he made the gesture, however, it flickered out. The bed dipped beside him as Raven crawled back on top of the covers, wrapping her arms loosely around his waist. They were alone.

“How are you?” she asked carefully, voice carrying in the quiet.

Charles shifted so that his arm was underneath the pillow behind her head. Raven settled into his side and placed her head against his chest. As their breathing relaxed into an easy tempo, he answered. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Her arms tightened. “Good.”

They lapsed back into silence, until Charles thought to ask, “What time is it?”

Raven laughed in his ear, smooth and melodic like a wind chime in the breeze.

“Three in the afternoon,” she said, the smile evident in her tone. “You woke up at around ten, but you were out of it.”

Charles sighed at the idea of another day wasted away in sleep. “I don’t remember.”

Raven shifted beside him. He felt the fine scales on her forehead press into the level skin of his collarbone. He shut his eyes and revelled in the feeling of holding his sister—his first and oldest friend—in his arms. In those nine months, Charles had wondered if he’d ever see her again. It had been impossible to tell how she felt about him, considering the argument they had before Cuba and all the promises he’d admitted to breaking. In his darkest moments, he hadn’t wanted her to come back at all, a feeling borne of both anger and shame.

He didn’t need telepathy to know that she was thinking the same thing. Her legs moved closer to his unconsciously, a warm weight over the blanket. He’d ask her if she was cold, but Raven didn’t feel the elements as he did.

He considered asking her anyway, just to break the silence, but she beat him to it.

“Charles,” she whispered in a small, broken voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. You have to believe me, I didn’t know.”

Charles pressed a kiss to her temple, brief but hard. It carried with it all the warmth he felt for her, an overwhelming torrent of love and affection. “I know you didn’t. It’s childish, but I never wanted you to find out, certainly not in the manner that you did. I didn’t want an accident to stop you from doing what you needed to do, regardless of whether I agreed with it or not. But—” He cut himself off.

“Yes?”

He shut his eyes, breath caught in his throat.

“But if I’m honest, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it to change the way you saw me,” he admitted heavily. “I couldn’t walk; I couldn’t even bring you home. I was a failure, in every sense of the word.

“I hope you understand why Hank and Alex reacted the way he did,” Charles continued, away from words that were getting too close for comfort. “It was hard for them to live through so much turmoil—to see their mentor, their carer, fall to pieces. It must have been terrifying.”

He should have known better than to hide from her, though. She was far too clever for her own good.

“What about you?”

Clever, clever Raven.

Charles shuffled onto his side and faced her in the low light of the room. He could see the faintest outline of her face in the dark.

Unlike Erik’s room, there were no windows here, no breathtaking view of the veritable mountain range just outside. She shut her eyes at the feel of his fingers against her cheek as he told her how he felt, received and transmitted by touch, like he did when they were children.

“In the span of a few hours I lost my friend, my sister and the ability to walk. How do you think I faired?”

Raven drew away, taken aback, but Charles followed her. He pressed their foreheads together, a comfort to the both of them.

“I’m not saying this to make you feel bad,” he whispered to her. “On the contrary, part of what went wrong was that I never told you how much you meant to me. I took you, what we had, for granted. But after... I guess you could say I took it badly. At times, very badly.”

“Something tells me that’s an understatement,” Raven murmured.

“It is, but I’ve made peace with the past. I have a second chance now, courtesy of Justice, and I plan to make the most of it.” He smiled.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing? With Justice?”

Raven’s worry inundated him, filtered through the connection between them, which she broke abruptly by sitting up. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting in the valley they formed.

Charles followed her, sitting alongside the wall. He reached over and switched on the light, casting her exotic features into sharp relief.

“Where’s the Raven I know, hm?” he ribbed gently, equal parts play and concern. “The one not afraid to speak her mind.”

Her look of concern collapsed into a roll of her eyes and a half-smile.

“She’s worried about her fool brother. Answer the question.” She nudged him with her shoulder for good measure.

Charles snorted and nudged her back.

“I think I do,” he mused thoughtfully. “Despite our physical bind, Justice and I exist separately. He makes it a clear distinction at all times. ‘To do anything else,’ he told me, ‘is an act of abomination.’ I’m not without reservations, but I made the best out of a bad situation.”

Raven sucked in a breath. She appeared to gather all her courage just to ask, “Will you tell me what happened?”

Charles frowned in confusion. “Erik didn’t—?”

She shook her head.

“Magneto didn’t say a word to anyone but Emma, and that was to argue with her,” she said, lips twisting unhappily.

“Ah.”

Raven raised her eyebrows and bumped him twice in rapid succession. “No more distractions. Talk to me.”

“I never said I’d tell you,” he pointed out.

“ _Charles_.”

Charles sighed, exasperated, but his eyes were bright with affection when they met hers. He gathered Raven beside him, pillowed her head on his shoulder, and began to speak.

He told her everything he could think of until the words died out. He held nothing back.

In the silence that followed, Raven raised her head to stare at him, her expression thoughtful.

“So let me get this straight,” she said at length, “you let a spirit of Justice run amok in your head, he powered you up and together you escaped from your cell, where you battled actual demons with your groovy new lightning gig and threw them back into a portal to the great beyond, which you shut behind you figuring that was it, except it exploded on its way out which—really, you’re surprised?—brought the whole place down around you. Is that what happened?”

She watched him carefully. Charles considered all she had said for a moment and nodded. “That’s right.”

Raven settled back into place beside him. “Huh.”

And that was that.

Except…

“You can come out now,” Charles called to the two retreating figures in the hallway.

Realizing the futility of the situation—Charles was, after all, a telepath—Hank and Alex emerged with twin looks of guilt on their faces.

“Charles—”

“Professor, I'm—”

“It's quite all right,” he said, raising a hand to silence them. “At least I won't have to repeat myself.”

Alex's body relaxed but Hank remained tightly wound, uncomfortable. “It doesn't excuse us, or our behavior at the warehouse.”

“Maybe not,” Charles agreed. “But considering how many conversations I eavesdropped in on during my childhood”—he exchanged a knowing look with Raven, who nodded vigorously—“I’d be a hypocrite to scold you for your curiosity.”

“Hey,” Raven said suddenly. “I haven’t taken you for the tour yet!”

She grinned wildly at the two boys, eyes dancing with mischief.

“Do you have a lab?” Hank took the chance to ask.

Raven considered the question.

“I… have absolutely no idea,” she confessed with a shrug. “Look with me?”

Hank agreed readily, not willing to pass up the opportunity observe the Brotherhood’s operation first-hand. Raven uncurled from Charles’ side, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before she bounded off the bed after Hank. Her grin softened. “Stay safe.”

Hank handed him a small notebook before he left, bound in soft, read leather. Charles opened it to find pages of written text, but had neither the time nor the inclination to decode it just yet.

Alex lingered at the door for a moment and hesitated. Charles glanced up and frowned at the turmoil on his face.

“Is everything all right, Alex?”

Each boy, Charles learned, approached problems differently. Alex confronted the issue, whereas Hank and, to a lesser extent, Sean, tended to bury it. At the same time, Charles found it easier to get the latter two to speak to him. Alex was best coerced gently, by remaining calm and accepting what he chose to give when he gave it.

Charles kept his face as open as possible, waited patiently for Alex to decide what he wanted to do.

Alex stepped back into the room and fisted his hands into his pockets.

“I don’t know what anyone else has said to you, Professor, but I get it. I know what being in solitary is like, just like I know how it feels to lose control.” He drifted closer as he spoke, to stare at Charles with hard, blue eyes that softened as he lost himself in thought.

“Until I met you, until I trained and became part of this team, all I could think about was how my powers were a curse.”

He fell into the chair by Charles’ bedside, stared at the metal railings on the bed like he saw right through them. “Even now, I’m still responsible for the lives I took. I can’t go back and I will never wipe my hands clean of that. All I can do is go forward and hope that every good thing I do will some way help towards making the world a better place.

“You gave me that purpose,” he said, his eyes jumping to Charles, “and I can never thank you enough for it. So I thought I’d do one better and let you know that I’m always here to talk if you need to.”

Charles digested this for a long moment.

“Thank you, Alex,” he said with a warm smile. “I’m so proud to see you come into your own.”

A smirk curved Alex’s mouth. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but so am I.”

They fell into a companionable silence. Charles flicked idly through the pages of the book Hank had given him, neither reading nor taking in any of the diagrams on its lined pages. Instead, he considered his team, how lucky he was to have them. How lucky they all were to be there.

“They’ll be coming home soon, won’t they?” Alex murmured, voice pitched low and soft.

Charles’ smile grew. “I hope so.”

“But they won’t stay.”

“Not forever, no,” Charles breathed deeply. “And that’s okay.”

It took a lot for him to admit it, but the words felt right.

Alex nodded and leaned back in his seat. He laughed quietly to himself, then again when he spoke up to Charles. “Guess we should be thanking this Justice, then. He’s a total drag, but still a bad-ass.”

“Justice isn’t easy,” Charles reminded him. “It’s righteous. It’s hard.”

Alex shrugged.

“Not cool to insult the guy in your head, I guess,” he said, conceding to the point. He stood up, moved his chair out of the walkway and ambled backwards to the door. When he reached the threshold, he gripped its metal frame in his hand. “I’ll catch you later, Professor. Take care.”

With a final grin, he was gone.

-

Charles leafed absently through the book. The first few pages were filled with Hank’s neat cursive, detailing the search parameters and the channels he chose to use to find the information. It was what came after that caught his eye.

Attached to the next page was a computer print-out with a list of coordinates. Coordinates, the notes stated, to a second CIA facility with the same power readings as the first, and a paper trail that saw the transportation of over fifty ‘prisoners’ from one base to the next.

Charles stared at the book in astonishment. Hank had found it. He’d  _actually_  found it.

Hank was busy designing a set of carbon-fiber wings for Sean when he tracked him down. Always on the look-out for a new perspective, he offered his own. His knowledge was nowhere near as extensive as Hank’s but it was, as the younger man put it, ‘inspired’ and they relaxed easily into familiar banter over the struggle for practicality in design.

“Do you have a moment?” Hank asked when their brainstorming hit a low.

“Sure,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

Hank hesitated, which worried him. Post-serum Hank wasn’t afraid to address the harsher topics. Charles could hardly fault him for being cautious, though. The last time he spoke his mind, things hadn’t exactly gone to plan.

Except that they had, in a way, better than he hoped for.

Charles’ collapse ensured that his X-Men and Erik’s Brotherhood worked together to get him out of there and, if he believed the testimonies he received so far, Justice was responsible for salvaging that particular relationship.

It didn’t surprise him that Justice understood more than he let on. Charles felt a burst of fond exasperation at the mad company he kept, including Hank, who still wasn’t speaking—who had no idea how to begin, it seemed. It didn’t feel right, bringing up the book just yet, but there were other things he had to say that did fit.

“Hank, I think you should know that—”

“Charles, I—”

They both cut off abruptly with a laugh. Hank gestured. “You first.”

Charles perched on the end of his chair and fixed Hank with a piercing stare.

“At the warehouse,” he began softly, “after you told the Brotherhood about my injury, I said I was sorry you felt that way and I was undeserving of the loyalty you gave me. I know what I said afterwards may have detracted from that, but I want you to know I meant it.”

He drew in a deep breath and plowed forward. “I’m afraid what I thought and what I said were two very different things.”

“So what did you think?” Hank eyed him warily.

He studied his hands until it became clear that the best way to communicate his sincerity was to look at Hank when he spoke. The last thing he wanted was another misunderstanding. They were family, and, on top of that, Hank was his friend.

“I wanted to tell you that I’ve already accepted my responsibility in what happened, just as I’ve forgiven Erik for his and Moira for hers.” Hank’s amber eyes snapped up. Charles watched him coolly. “It was anaccident. Unfortunate? Yes. Devastating? Most certainly. But I’m an adult and recent events aside, I don’t need coddling.

“You can’t put words in my mouth like you did back there,” Charles implored with a rueful smile. “I may be willing to set aside my differences, to mend the bridges burnt in anger and pain, but make no mistake. I know who is trustworthy, and who is not.”

A long silence followed his words. Hank ruminated where he sat, eyes fixated on his large, furred claws. Between his genius-level intellect and hulking appearance, it was easy to forget how young he was. When he lifted his gaze to Charles’ face, he looked well beyond his years.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” he said at last.

The armrests on the chair rattled as Charles pushed off them and stepped over to where Hank sat. He knelt in front of him and took Hank’s hand in both of his. He clasped it tightly, without even a hint of trepidation. Those hands had helped him up more times that he could count. He had nothing to fear from Hank, the beast’s animal nature tempered by the prodigy within.

“Apology accepted,” Charles replied with a smile.

He patted Hank’s hand and stood. “I’m sorry as well. The past week and a half couldn’t have been easy on you. Or the others, for that matter.”

Hank stared at him in stunned disbelief. Then he shook his head and laughed fondly. “Only you, Professor.”

Before Charles could ask what he meant by that, he sighed and said, “I won’t lie to you; we were on edge for a long time. Ororo was convinced Farouk had something to do with your disappearance, and that it was her fault you were missing.”

Charles breathed in sharply. “Is she—?”

“She’s okay. We told her otherwise, and I think she got the message after the hundredth time. We were quite adamant.” He smiled wearily.

Charles released the breath he was holding. “Good. That’s—good.”

The conversation lulled. In an attempt to avoid another awkward silence, Hank asked, “I take it you went over the data?”

They both latched onto the change of subject with fervor. Hank explained the results of his search while Charles helped extrapolate what, exactly, those results were. Justice, who rested quietly during their conversation before, provided support through Charles. Justice was curious about everything Hank spoke of, so much so that it became easier to understand what he meant when he said that ‘Justice’ wasn’t his name, it was the virtue he chose to embody. He was capable of emotion; he just chose not to let it cloud his judgment.

When questioned about the possibility of another tear, Justice grew concerned. ‘ _It is but a theory. I believe something different, something infinitely more powerful, is at work here. Your world was never meant for my kind or theirs.’_

“What are you saying?” Charles said out loud, for Hank’s benefit as well as his own. It was hard to distinguish between their voices when they were both thinking at the same time, and it was common courtesy to let Hank know when Justice was speaking to him.

‘ _I am saying,’_  the spirit spelled out patiently, ‘ _that I believe it wasn’t a demon who tore the Veil, but one of your own.’_

He relayed this information to Hank, who shifted back into his seat.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint what caused this when a lot about mutation is a grey area,” Hank mused. “But it makes sense.”

Hank leapt up from his seat and started to pace—long, brisk steps within the crowded room. He made a few circuits, then turned to watch Charles closely, an idea on his lips. “If these demons could tear through our reality so easily, then they would have done it before. If they had, it’s possible I don’t know about it, but something tells me that Justice would.”

‘ _Yes.'_

“Yes.”

 The spark in Hank’s eye grew brighter. His blue lips curled into a grin. “Could the power readings you had me track come from a person?”

“I think so,” Charles said carefully. “How did you find them anyway? I wasn’t exactly specific on what I wanted you to look for.”

Hank frowned. “I thought you knew where they were from. You were the one who put me onto him in the first place.”

Charles wracked his brain for something, anything that made sense. His jaw dropped. “Wait— _Alistaire_? He’s  _alive_?”

“Were you expecting something different?”

He shook his head, still caught up in the idea. “I don’t know what I expected, but of course. I told him to talk to you.” His face broke into a grin. “That’s fantastic. So he contacted you when? Before or after I called you?”

Hank’s expression twisted in dismay. “After. If he’d called before, he and I would have had a different conversation.”

“Different?”

“One involving threats,” he said, deadpan.

“Ah.”

‘ _The doctor…’_ Justice started, stringing thoughts from the both of them together. _‘I have seen him only in your memories, but he is a good man. Should he offer more help to our cause, we would be wise to accept it. Or ask for it.’_

“Did he give you any contact details?” Charles asked by way of reply.

Hank pointed to the book in his hand. “It’s all in there.”

Charles grinned sheepishly. “I admit, I haven’t read it all. I got to the part where you’d found the second facility and came right over.”

The thought elicited a laugh from Hank, deep and rumbling.

“Is he more like you then? In comparison to someone like Magneto, I mean,” he said carefully, as if it might offend the spirit.

Charles shrugged. He truly didn’t know. “Justice’s true enemy is complacency. So long as someone is fighting for it, be it peacefully or otherwise, the idea will live on. I think he toes the line between Erik and me, though emotion  _could_  drive him down the darker path if he let it.

“Would he remain my friend Justice, or would he change?” Charles asked the room at large. “I don’t think I’d like the answer.”

His mind was deathly silent.

Hank laughed again. “I’m sure glad he chose you, then. He’d change for sure if he was in me.”

Charles smiled sympathetically. “You don’t know that. Besides, you witnessed a great deal of my anger yesterday.”

“You’re a telepath,” Hank reasoned. “I’m not. Try as we might, neither of us can truly imagine what it would be like if Justice possessed someone without your abilities. I hope we never have to. As for that facility, whether we find another tear or the mutant who caused all this, we’ll go in and we’ll fix it.”

To Hank, he nodded.

To Justice, he thought,  _‘We go tonight.’_

-

Charles skirted out of the rooms assigned to Hank and Alex, treading carefully away from them even with their occupants rooted firmly in sleep. They’d retired later than expected, but it hadn’t compromised the plan like he thought it would. Charles was still on schedule, albeit more on edge. He’d tied up the last of his affairs in the form of a letter for each of them, and for Raven.

He had one last stop before he left, a final letter he’d delayed in giving for as long as possible, but could delay no longer.

Erik’s door loomed in front of him, its owner ensconced in dream. Charles lingered in the hall and bit his lip. Was he doing this?

Yes, he was.

He moved to force open the door, only to stop at the feeling of another mind drawing closer to his—a  _waking_  mind.

“Xavier.”

Emma appeared in the hallway, a splash of color in the shadow. Her hair hung loose and damp around her shoulders, a white silk robe cinched tightly around her waist. As he turned to face her, Charles marveled a how young she looked without make-up on. Her eyes were the only part of her hardened persona that remained and they stared him down ruthlessly.

“Miss Frost,” Charles said graciously, as if she hadn’t just caught him in the act of breaking into her leader’s room.

They watched one another for a long moment before she spoke, voice unexpectedly soft.

“Be careful.”

Charles felt his eyebrows knit together in surprise and confusion. “I will.”

Emma tilted her head slightly, as if doing so would bring understanding.

“You don’t need luck,” she mused, her eyes distant. They refocused on him with shocking clarity. “Good luck.”

“You too,” he replied, a knee-jerk reaction to her unexpected courtesy.

Nothing made sense to him anymore. This wasn’t the way Charles Xavier and Emma Frost interacted with one another, at least not in his experience. There were no barbs or threats, no sarcasm or insults. Just as he wore his bravest face, Emma had deconstructed hers piece by piece until all the smoke and mirrors were gone. The question on his mind wasn’t why she’d done it, but why  _now_.

Emma’s lips twitched. “I suppose you’ll ask me to take care of them.”

“Will you?”

“I will,” she promised. Her blue eyes, when they met his, were fierce. “Don’t mess this up, Xavier, though I suppose that’s inevitable.”

“Why do you hate me?” Charles asked suddenly, her words striking a chord.

“I don’t hate you,” she argued with a roll of her eyes. “I just don’t  _believe_  you. I don’t know who this Justice figure is, but it isn’t what it says it is. Everything about it is unnatural. It’s not supposed to be there; I know you know that.”

“Once the problem is dealt with, Justice returns back to his world and I to mine.  _Then_  you can have your precious control back.”

The words came out through clenched teeth, frustrated and fatigued. Emma watched him carefully. He felt the first tendrils of true anger, but knew it was uncalled-for. She wasn’t the one who got him into this mess. That was all on him, one-hundred percent. His fingers twitched by his sides and he longed to run them through his hair in aggravation. Doing so would be an admission of defeat, so he didn’t.

His next words were a dismissal, but a courteous one. Emma could blow his plan wide open if she refused to cooperate. That deserved respect.

“If you’ll excuse me.”

She stepped back and out of his way as he opened Erik’s door and crept inside. He shut it behind him, felt her mind retreat down the hall to her own quarters, where it stayed. Charles walked on his toes towards the figure lying half-naked on the bed. Erik’s face was slack and unresponsive, the gentle rise and fall of his chest illuminated by a strip of moonlight that filtered in through the window.

He didn’t stir when Charles kissed him goodbye, the gentle press of lips to his forehead, his cheek and his mouth. Charles’ throat closed at the sight of Erik curled around the bed sheets, finding peace in a far-away dream. He only wished reality could be so kind, to either of them.

He placed the letter on the table and turned away. Emma seemed ready to keep to her promise; it was time he kept his.

Charles was half-way to the surface when the tentative silence around him was disturbed.

‘ _I have not seen a mortal world in many years. It’s very different to where I am from,’_ Justice said airily.

It took him a moment to realize what was happening. Justice never said more than was required—he responded to cues, yes, but didn’t see a need to fill the void with idle chatter. Then it clicked. He was trying to distract Charles from his nerves.

The bigger shock came when it actually worked.

“What’s it like, where you’re from?” he asked. Justice had spoken on the subject, but never anything of substance until now.

‘ _The Fade is impermanent, forever shaped by the minds of dreamers and the will of the spirits within,’_  he explained.  _‘It is ever-shifting, in a constant state of flux as it’s made and remade. Be still and I will show you.’_

Charles stilled.

‘ _Close your eyes._ ’

He closed them.

Justice’s voice continued to speak in a low, haunting whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

‘ _Because of the Veil, some believe the Fade is a different place entirely. But there is no ‘this side’ and ‘that side’. You do not cross over into the world of the spirits so much as you... open your eyes to it.'_

A weighted pressure rested atop his closed eyelids. Justice’s presence slipped away, leaving him alone in a world of unrelenting black. Fear of the dark was never an issue for a boy who could read minds, but it stirred in his chest all the same. It reminded him, terrifyingly, of his cell. His hands itched to touch the walls, but considering he could barely feel the ground under his feet anymore, Charles wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“It feels like a lifetime is passing me by and I can’t see it,” he said in frustration.

As quickly as it came, the pressure dissipated and Justice returned to stave off the darkness. The spirit reached out and laid a hand on his chest, just above his heart. When he spoke, he spoke in both mind and voice.

‘ _So open your eyes.’_

As his eyes snapped open, a rush of air hit Charles square in the face. He felt a sharp tug of wind against the worn leather jacket he’d appropriated from Erik’s wardrobe, and drew it tighter around him in response. When it died down and Charles could finally see, the first thing he noticed was that the Brotherhood’s base was gone, that he was...

Elsewhere.

“Oh. Oh my god.”

The clouds in the sky were unlike any he had ever seen. They looked like the curling tendrils of the Aurora Borealis, a lightshow of unimaginable depth. They were a hybrid of colors—grey, white, sepia and yellow-green, all striving to carve a place for themselves.

The fields stretched out for miles on either side of him, but in the distance, there was a city. When he peered closer, however, Charles felt his incredulity reach a fevered pitch. The city wasn’t level with him at all. It was... hovering, for lack of a better word, in the indistinct space between land and sky—a hulking black mass suspended in the air. Its edges rippled and blurred.

‘ _Unable to create for ourselves, we restructure our world from what we glimpse in yours. There’s only one permanent fixture—the Black City, forever in the horizon. It never draws closer, nor will you ever lose sight of it completely. It’s a reminder of our failure, the greed and corruption that blackened its golden streets. I believe the story is similar to that of your Bible, where first man’s folly cost him dearly.’_

“How did we get here?” he asked, the moment the question occurred to him. “Did we sunder the Veil?”

_‘No.’_

Justice gathered his bearings and expounded,  _‘The tearing of the Veil is an aberration, a tangible link that should not exist. In places of great death and destruction, the Veil grows thin, and where it can be seen or felt is called a tear. If you think of the Fade as opening your eyes, think of the Veil as your eyelids—you must transition between one place and the next, but you never truly travel. You are adjusting your perceptions. It’s imprecise in any case, a metaphor used by mortal scholars to explain away what they don’t understand.’_

“I’m having a hard time of it myself, to be honest.”

‘ _You are closer than most, Charles,’_  Justice replied with something akin to fondness.

“Careful now,” Charles warned with a tut, smile widening by degrees. “That’s almost a real emotion you have there.”

‘ _I’m capable of emotion,’_ Justice argued, managing to sound both proud and disdainful of the fact.

“Unsettling, I bet?”

 _‘It is easy to feel unsettled when everything around you is different,’_ the spirit huffed.

He hadn’t realized that Justice might take actual offense to what he was saying. He opened his mouth to apologize, only for it to snap closed and Charles—Charles hadn’t been the one to do that.

“Hey!”

Justice’s amusement filtered through the bond between them. Either Charles was incredibly slow on the uptake, or that sneak knew a hell of a lot more about emotion than he was letting on. ‘ _The mortal world I visited was very different indeed. There was more excrement, for one, and you walked your way to travel. You did not use these—automobiles.’_

“Are we really standing here—in a metaphysical realm, might I add—talking about cars?”

_‘It seems so.’_

“Let’s get out of here,” Charles said, exasperated. “Where  _is_  ‘here’? Not in the Fade, but physically?”

Justice was silent for a long moment before he said, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly how much trouble he was getting himself into,  _‘I believe you mortals call it “Canada”.’_

Charles stared at the discolored field around him and the way it shifted and changed depending on which way he turned his head. Then, with agonizing slowness, he dropped his head into his hands. His frustration bled into amusement, until he was shaking with it. Charles laughed and laughed until his lungs burned and the corner of his eyes prickled.

“I think I’m actually going to miss you,” he said through the web of his fingers, voice thick with mirth.

If he had the chance to look back and could choose a memory to encapsulate his experience, it would be that moment; Justice thrummed within him, a beacon of strength in an otherwise insubstantial world, and for the first time in a long time, Charles felt truly safe.


	5. Bookends of the Same Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, implied kidnapping (adults & children), dark imagery, supernatural elements and angst apply. Also, snarky doctors, Erik being adorable and BAMF!Charles.
> 
> Also, the inspiration for this chapter title/final line comes from Charles' amazing quote in the comics:
> 
> “Magneto is closer to me than my own brother. We are like bookends of the same soul.”
> 
> — Charles Xavier, Excalibur Vol. 2

The easy atmosphere between them suffered a major hit when they reached the rendezvous point. Justice’s concern was palpable, and—like Charles’ nerves—it set them both on edge. Every step felt like an uphill climb, and Charles knew exactly why. So much rode on the successful completion of this mission. Justice didn’t belong in his world, not like this, and Charles was eager to tie up the loose ends. He had no idea what would happen to the people in that base, good or otherwise, if the entity that broke the Veil remained. If he could save even one man like Alistaire Stuart or William Drake, then he would do everything in his power to do so.

“Xavier?”

Charles turned, startled by the sound of his name. A figure lingered at the edge of the treeline, dressed in dark clothing. They wore a hooded sweatshirt that concealed their features, like the labourers in downtown New York used to fend off the cold weather. Charles sidled up to them, hands fisted tightly in the pockets of Erik’s leather jacket. As he drew in closer, their features became discernible in the moonlight.

“Speak of the devil and he doth appear,” he said with a smile.

“Touché,” Alistaire replied dryly, but the tense line of his shoulders relaxed.

He pulled back the hood of his jacket as Charles sauntered up to him, revealing the strong line of his jaw and the crisp, dark hair that played around his face. Alistaire watched him with something akin to awe as he moved. It took Charles a long moment to remember that the last time they were in the same room together he’d been bound to a wheelchair. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the doctor’s expression.

“Before you ask—no, you’re not hallucinating. I said I had a surprise and here it is.”

“Some surprise,” Alistaire breathed.

Charles bit back a grin. “Splendid, isn’t it?”

Alistaire lifted his head to stare at him sharply, eyes incandescent in the night, and nodded. The shadows scuttled across his face the same way the light had played on Erik’s, a strip of silver over his warm, supple skin as he slept. Charles drew the jacket tighter around his body. He didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on such thoughts, no matter how hard he wished he could lose himself in them.

“Did you have any trouble getting out of the facility?” Charles prompted, partly to change the subject and partly because he wanted to know.

Alistaire shook his head. “I left like you said, took Will Drake and anyone else who would listen to me. I wasn’t the only one who knew something else was going on in there. Even the men without clearance to section F could feel it, like there was something in the air. When I told them about the threat to their safety, they didn’t listen. But when I mentioned that I knew what the scientists were doing, what they’d done to you and the others, they bent. You saved many lives by warning me that day, Charles. Thank you.

Charles wilted under the weight of Alistaire’s gaze, the sincerity in his voice.

“I couldn’t save everyone,” he said.

Alistaire watched him carefully. “I know what happened at the facility.”

“Do you?” Charles asked numbly.

Dread twisted and bubbled in his stomach, roused by the indecipherable look on Alistaire’s face. Charles waited for his dressing down, for his judgement to be imparted. Alistaire was angry, as Charles knew he would be, but the source of that anger—the words that spilled from his mouth—weren’t what he was expecting at all. Something in his gaze, he realized, must have broadcasted his fear.

“After everything I could have done, all the lives I could have saved but didn’t, you _really think_ I’m going to yell at you?” Alistaire growled, incredulous. “That I have the right to yell at you?”

“Yes?”

Alistaire rolled his eyes. “Then you’re an idiot.”

He stepped forward into Charles’ personal space and gripped his forearms, squeezing tightly.

“You’re also a good man, and that’s rare. You don’t have to worry about me, Xavier. I understand what it’s like, being forced to do something you never wanted to. You know that, though.”

He did. The CIA blackmailed Alistaire’s brother, Brigadier Alexander Stuart, into compliance with his brother’s life as the deciding factor. He was a decent person who refused to stand idly by while they tortured and maimed innocent people whose only crime was being born. With his considerable influence over the soldiers in his care, the CIA had to ensure his allegiance was concrete—he was the official liaison to MI-13, which operated out of the Portwell House in Whitehall. If he reported negatively, it could cripple the integrity of their operation. It wouldn’t stop it, but plausible deniability would be difficult to maintain if America’s allies learned the truth.

Charles stared at Alistaire in the odd half-light of the moon. “How is he?”

“Relieved,” he said, taking to the change of subject without further comment. “Said we should have planned our break-in around his dinner with the Major, though, so he and his men could assist. They’re still watching him, you know, still using me as a bargaining chip. They lost about a hundred men in the chemical fire, including us if memory serves. Informing their next of kin is the least they can do.”

Charles tried to ignore the flare of guilt in his chest at the words _'lost about a hundred men'_ , but wasn't quite successful. “And you?”

The doctor sighed. “Honestly? Tired. Angry. In need of answers.”

“I know the feeling,” Charles agreed. He eyed the CIA facility in the distance. “We should probably get started.”

“How are we getting in?”

A sly smile curved Charles’ mouth.

“The only way we _can_ get in,” he said, blue eyes glittering. “Through the front door.”

-

“I want it on record that I am against this,” Alistaire grunted as he trudged through the underbrush, pushing ice-covered branches out of the way. His breath was a plume of white mist in the cold night air. “It’s a terrible plan, it’s not going to work and I’m going to die.”

Charles called over his shoulder. “You’re being dramatic!”

“Dramatic? Have you _seen_ what we’re up against?”

He pointed forward, to where the CIA facility loomed large on the hill in front of them. It was an imposing structure of steel and glass; a pair of guardhouses on tall, metal struts overlooked the main building, equipped with spotlights and around-the-clock security personnel.

Charles felt the silvery thread of their thoughts, how easy it would be to pull them.

“I’m aware,” he answered simply.

“And?”

Charles held up a hand to stay him suddenly and stilled. With deliberate slowness, he raised his other hand to his temple and shut his eyes. His lips twitched but he didn’t speak. A long moment passed in silence. When he finished, he turned back to the doctor and continued their conversation as if nothing had happened. “I’ve made several promises to good people, including you. I won’t break them.”

His blue eyes were vivid in the half-light, as was the determined set of his mouth.

“Okay,” Alistaire said, and he surprised them both by meaning it.

Charles fixed him with a dazzling smile. “Excellent!” He looked about them both. “We should go; they’ve cleared the gate for us.”

Alistaire’s eyebrows reached for his hairline. “They have?”

True to his word, there wasn’t a soldier in sight when they pushed past the last of the undergrowth. The fence was eight feet of chain-linked steel, topped off with a foot of barbed wire. It spanned the perimeter of the building, coming together at the front to form the gate.

Charles sidled up to it and made a pleased sound under his breath. Alistaire peered over his shoulder.

“Oh, come on!” he huffed. “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

“I assure you, I am not.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“That,” Charles pointed out, “is the benefit of having a telepath on your side. Why open doors when they can be opened for you?”

He shot him a grin and pushed open the gate, allowing the padlock to fall to the gravel beneath them. The security booth, when they swept past it, was empty. Charles saw Alistaire spare it a considering glance, but the doctor followed him without comment.

They continued up the rock-strewn path until it split into two. One fork branched off to a level parking lot where several M151 utility jeeps were stationed, their olive paint cracked and dirt-slicked. The other led to the main entrance, a sealed door set into a wall of metal and glass.

Charles made a beeline for the latter.

The door was equipped with neither handle nor keyhole to open it and fit near seamlessly into the wall. Charles placed his hand alongside it and shivered at the feeling of cold metal under his fingertips. Then, he splayed his fingers wide and _pushed_.

The door exploded.

A deep, discordant groan filled the air, followed by a blinding flash of light and a concussion wave that rattled him to his bones. Charles stared at the gaping hole where the door had been and the heap of smouldering metal that remained. He sent his thanks to Justice, who warned him to remain vigilant.

“That was _not_ telepathy,” Alistaire argued as Charles stepped delicately over the remains of the door.

No sooner had he passed the threshold than a thunderous screech sliced through the air. Charles gritted his teeth and side-eyed the security alarm as the atrium was plunged into red half-light. He reached out again, let a single branch of white-blue lightning curl around his wrist like a snake and unfurled his fingers. It struck the bottom of the console and spread, short circuiting the system in seconds. The sound vanished.

“You’re right,” Charles agreed when his head was no longer ringing. “That wasn’t telepathy.”

He levelled a smile at Alistaire.

“ _This,_ on the other hand...”

Charles settled into a stance with his legs shoulder-width apart and his back perpendicular to the ground. His fingers found their anchorage and he lapsed into a fugue stare, face blank as his mind wandered elsewhere. It took less than a minute to span the complex, dipping into the thoughts of every mind he came across, until he held hundreds of shimmering threads in his palm.

 _Go,_ he whispered into their heads, _to wherever you feel the safest. Forget your orders. Forget this place and my voice. You won’t see me as you pass by, nor will you see my companion. Leave. Leave now._

Charles swayed where he stood as the connection faded into nothing. Alistaire’s arm shot out to secure him around the waist and straightened them both. Charles glanced hazily at him and grinned. “Oh, how I’ve missed that.”

Alistaire sighed in fond exasperation. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid getting killed.”

“‘No death for Alistaire’...” Charles mused. “That’s not very exciting now, is it?”

He snorted. “You and I think very differently if this is your idea of ‘exciting’.”

With a friendly slap to his bicep, Charles wandered past Alistaire and into the facility proper. The first few agents crawled out of the woodwork and, true to Charles’ instruction, bypassed them completely. He watched through the glass as sentries left their guardhouses, unarmed, and followed the road to the gate. Personnel passed them by in a slow trickle—guards, scientists, administration staff, even maintenance.

“The longer they wait, the more insistent the urge,” Charles explained as he watched them go.

He saw Alistaire grimace. “So it plays off the body?”

Charles shook his head. “Just the mind. It’s a perceived itch, not a real one. The body has its own rules, and I don’t break them lightly.”

“But you _have_ broken them?”

Sebastian Shaw’s death flared in his mind—sharp, bright and, for a scant few seconds, _real_. Charles clamped down on the urge to shudder, as he knew the doctor would notice if he did. It was difficult, though; the very thought of that monster and what he did to Erik... Justice stirred within him, roused by the anger Shaw’s name provoked.

“A few times, yes,” Charles said and looked up sharply. He fixed Alistaire with an intense stare. “Is that a problem, doctor?”

“No.” There was no hesitation, spoken or otherwise, in his answer.

Charles felt a swell of warmth. He also felt time slipping through his fingertips. The matter settled, it was time to move.

The atrium was a large and ultimately superfluous room, even as an entrance. Only a fraction of the people left through it and the building was almost empty. Charles rounded the security desk on the opposite side and switched off the red emergency lights. The fluorescent tubes above them spluttered to life with a dull hum, revealing a sparsely decorated room. It wasn’t the hardback chairs, the steel tables or wood-panelled ceiling that caught his eye, but what was beyond them.

Two standard doors, one on either side of the far wall, bore the familiar warning: Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point.

“The door on the left leads to block A, B and C,” Charles explained calmly, “and the door on the right to D, E and F. Unlike the first facility, this base operates on a single level with only maintenance and electrical running beneath.”

Alistaire, finally adapted to the disturbing ease in which Charles filtered information, nodded curtly and asked, “Where are we going?”

“D-block.”

“What’s in D-block?”

Charles’ expression was blank, his blue eyes cold.

“The holding cells,” he said flatly, walking to the door.

He hauled it open to reveal an empty hallway, glacial eyes scanning every inch of it anyway. Justice’s thoughts shifted from a passive role to an active one in his mind. He shared his most recent memories with the spirit and felt his approval like the sun on his face, warm and pleasing.

‘ _The injustice here will stop, of this I can assure you.’_

Charles’ anger melted into resolve. He strode down the hallway with determination, eyeing the doors on either side. He sought out the only other minds in the facility besides his and Alistaire’s—the mutants. From there, he sprinted.

“Charles?” Alistaire called after him. “Charles!”

He heard the other man’s well-worn boots slam against the smooth floor behind him and sped up.

Charles tracked the starbursts of thought that skittered through his mind; Alistaire, presumably, tracked Charles. With the facility empty of all personnel including security and defence agents, it took only a handful of minutes to reach the outskirts of D-block. The hallways were short, narrow and winding until they reached the entrance to the holding cells, where the layout changed entirely.

The corridors were wider in D-block and twice as long, with a sterile quality attributed to hospitals and medical facilities the world over. The doors on either side of the hall were dead-bolted and heavy, where all the others in the facility were standard. Each door, made of smooth metal, had a number inscribed onto it. They descended as he passed them. D-55, D-54, D-53, D-52...

Charles felt ill.

“There are so many of them...” Alistaire said quietly, echoing his sentiments exactly. “What do we do now?”

He directed the question inward.

‘ _Our course of action is not so simple as to release them, Charles,’_ Justice warned. ‘ _We cannot know which of these mutants have been possessed and which have not. We will have to test them individually. It will take time, and resolve.’_

“We go through them one by one and make sure they’re okay,” he paraphrased.

Alistaire’s mouth formed an unhappy line. “I don’t like this, Charles. It doesn’t feel right.”

Charles didn’t state the obvious, that nothing about that place felt right. His anger would do all harm and no good by increasing the pressure of an already tense situation. His reply, when it came, was muted. “I know.”

He thumbed the number on one of the doors, peered through the small window at the top to see a shadowy figure in the corner of the room. They had their knees pulled up tightly to their chest, head tucked into the circle of their arms. They didn’t look up at his approach.

Suddenly, a blinding pain struck his head. Charles’ hands flew to his temples, shaken by the suddenness of it. Alistaire’s voice was a distant murmur, calling to him, asking if he was okay. He wasn’t. Oh _god_ , how he wasn’t.

‘ _What power could cause so great a pain?’_ Justice cried out, voice strained.

Charles startled at the realization that he wasn’t the only one experiencing it; Justice’s presence in their shared mind flickered from solid to incorporeal and back again.

“I—I don’t know,” he croaked. “It—”

He stopped.

The pain, the intense heat, the weight of it behind his eyes—it was familiar. He’d felt it before, a pressure that deafened him, that robbed him of sight and the ability to breathe. But where?

A half-formed memory rose to meet him.

The first facility, somewhere in the first facility, but what was he doing? No, not him, _Justice._ Charles slept, tucked away in a corner of their mind as Justice eradicated the demons and closed the Veil.

The Veil...

Something about the Veil.

Something they  _saw_?

Something they  _did_?

All at once, it hit him, and his eyes blew wide open.

“GET DOWN— _NOW!_ ”

Charles knocked Alistaire to the floor, pinned him with his weight as a white-hot wall of light expanded laterally above their heads. The force of the explosion ripped through the complex, shook the ground violently beneath them. Steel bent and glass bubbled. Smoke and dust billowed out in all directions, engulfing them completely, obscuring everything.

“Bloody hell,” Alistaire groaned as Charles lifted off him.

He rubbed the back of his head gingerly, propped up on one elbow to survey the damage. Charles knelt astride him and watched as the cloud of rubble settled. In the flickering glow of the remaining lights, the air was an eerie grey.

The world was silent, and then he heard the screaming.

- 

The far side of D-block was a twisted, gnarled mess. The explosion had pulverised the far wall, not so much as to allow the captive mutants to escape, but enough that a well-placed hit could probably do the trick. The metal doors attached to each cell didn’t fare much better. In fact, they didn’t fare at all. They lie in pieces, strewn down the halls, and Charles’ face fell at the sight of empty cells that followed.

This just got a lot more complicated.

‘ _If any of these mutants face possession, my presence should be enough to call out the demons. I am a connection to the Fade. I may have as much power as they do in wielding it, but a spirit’s power is coveted by the corrupt. They will try for it, if given the opportunity.’_

“So we give them the opportunity,” he murmured, so quiet that only Justice could hope to hear him. “What then?”

Justice flooded him with power in response. A wicked shard of glass lay on the floor and Charles angled it up with his boot. It hit his face, his eyes and, for the first time, Charles saw what Erik and the others must have seen.

Veins of white-blue light emanated from his eyes, trickled down his face in streams of liquid energy. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a rhythmic thrum that was, perhaps, a little faster than it should’ve been. The light was scattered intermittently down his body, coiled around his collarbone, down his shoulder and towards his hands. When he raised them, spread his fingers, they glowed even stronger—weaponized.

‘ _Then,_ ’ Justice answered. _‘We fight.’_

“What’s with that, by the way? Not the mumbling—the blue glowing bit.”

Charles knew this was coming, although he didn’t have a definitive explanation for it yet. He’d never had to tell anybody from scratch before, they’d just found out. “The surprise I told you about? It came with a few conditions.”

Alistaire snorted. “I’ll say.”

“When I told you I got a hold of myself that night in the F-4 chamber, I wasn’t exactly honest with you,” Charles said sheepishly. “I had help.

“A spirit of justice saved my life, protected me from the creatures that escaped the Veil. We came to an agreement. If he could get me out, I would help him track down the rest of the mutants that had been possessed. He was certain— _is_ certain—that whatever caused the tear was transported with all the rest to this facility.” He narrowed his eyes; they blazed with Justice’s power. “That it’s here, with us, right now.”

Alistaire’s mouth curved into an unhappy frown. “I don’t know what disturbs me more, to be honest.”

There was a dull thud from somewhere within the complex, a loud crack in the air that signified another explosion.

Charles averted his eyes from the glass to the doctor’s face, which grew ashen. “No, I know now. _Definitely_ that.”

 _“‘We have to hurry,’”_ Charles said, at precisely the same time as Justice. Their voices twined together, an ominous echo to Charles’ already serious tone. He saw Alistaire start in the periphery of his vision, but he followed him without comment.

They took off in a sprint down the first corridor, Charles in the lead. He tracked the mutants closely, from the ones still concealed in their cells to those roaming the halls in various stages of panic. They rounded the bend to find a small cluster of them there, their flimsy hospital gowns blackened and torn by fallen debris. Their leader, a man in his mid-twenties, raised his hand and created a shield around them.

The shield was semi-transparent, but for the faintest tinge of purple light. It vibrated loudly, a deep hum that filled his ears.

“You don’t have to worry!” Charles called over the din. “I’m like you. We’re all allies here!”

He attempted to reach out with his telepathy, but the shield appeared to repel _all_ kinds of incoming material—be it friend or foe, physical or mental, psionic or earthly. He couldn’t establish a hold on their minds. Except... he didn’t have to.

Charles allowed Justice’s light to encompass his body. He collected it in his hands, displayed it to the group.

He and Justice spoke in unison. _“‘We will not harm you.’”_

He clenched his fist, clamped down hard and the glow faded. After a beat, so did the shield that flickered and spun around the mutants.

The man swallowed. “I’m sorry. The guards seem to be gone, but some of the others are—the snake girl fought them off long enough for us to escape but they’re not... not _human_ anymore. I know we’re all a bit different, but we’re not evil. At least, we weren’t.”

Beside him, Alistaire stiffened. The man looked at Charles with wide, brown eyes that begged for answers. His dark hair was matted, his face dirty, but his gaze was clear. Charles realized with sickening dread that he was the oldest in the group. The rest were children.

One of the girls spoke up, her voice small and frightened. “W–Will that happen to us?”

Charles stepped forward, schooled his face into a mask of composure.

“My name is Charles and this is Alistaire. I’m a telepath, which means I can read minds,” he said slowly, gauging their reactions. The man tensed slightly but nodded. The teenagers behind him—two girls and one boy—watched him, riveted. “It also means I can use my ability to see if you were exposed to the same thing the others were. _If_ you’ll let me.”

The first person to step forward was the boy. The girl who had spoken earlier reached for his hand but he evaded her with nimble steps. It was more than quick-footedness, Charles realized as the edges around the boy’s body blurred. His ability was some kind of propulsion or super-speed, almost like Hank’s before he took the serum. He couldn’t have been a day over fifteen.

“I’m Seb and these are my sisters, Belle”—he indicated to the younger girl, cowering in her sister’s embrace, a single hazel eye visible from the folds of her gown—“and Ava. Belle and I are fast and Ava is strong.”

“How old are you, kid?” Alistaire asked brusquely. Charles side-eyed him, watched his face darken.

“Thirteen!” Seb exclaimed with obvious pride. “Ava is twelve and Belle is eight. Garrett is _waaaay_ older. We just met him,” he added, grinning sunnily up at the man, Garrett, who regarded him fondly.

“They were in the adjacent cell,” Garrett explained. “I heard them talking a few nights ago. When the explosion happened, I went for them immediately. They’re the youngest ones in this place, as far as I know.”

The fury on Alistaire’s face said it all.

Children.

They’d been experimenting on _children._

“Can I?” Charles raised his fingers and drummed them against his temple.

Garrett hesitated but Seb didn’t. His bright eyes—a scintillating shade of blue—were determined. He took another step forward, only for the older man to place a hand on his shoulder. Garrett shook his head at the boy, who wilted.

“I’ll go first,” he insisted.

Garrett pulled Seb behind him and eyed Charles with apprehension, the taut line of his body visible under the thin fabric of his gown. He looked about ready to shield again, but staved off the urge. Charles fused his fingers to the side of his head, sharpening his focus, and sought out Garrett’s mind. It shone the exact same shade of deep purple as his mutation. Unlike the shield, however, it acquiesced to Charles’ presence immediately and granted him access. He glided between their thoughts and readied himself.

Then, he dove.

‘ _This will not take long,’_ Justice advised. ‘ _A demon, if present, will not resist temptation our presence invokes.’_

The spirit released its power into the chasm of Garrett’s mind. They watched as the orb of light drifted slowly away from them and into the plum-colored fog. Seconds passed. Nothing happened. Justice moved to the orb, pressed armoured fingers to its glittering surface.

‘ _This man is free of the taint. He is not possessed, nor is there a gateway for a demon to come through,’_ he confirmed.

Charles opened his eyes within the safety of his own mind. Garrett blinked back a second later. “What’s the verdict?”

“Nothing. So long as we get you out of here, you’ll be fine.”

Garrett’s shoulders all but collapsed under the weight of his relief. Seb swayed behind him, jittery with excitement.

“Did it hurt?”

“Not at all, little man,” Garrett said, smiling warmly at him.

Seb’s face broke into an enormous grin, aimed at Garrett then at Charles. “Me next!”

Charles knelt in front of the small boy and reaffixed his fingers. Seb’s mind was a kaleidoscope of color and, like the Fade, was in a constant state of change. Justice repeated the test, the orb sinking fast into the shaking, shifting abyss. It returned without incident, however, and as Justice parsed over it a blossom of triumph filtered in the space between them. Seb, too, was free of influence.

He conducted the test twice more on Ava and Belle, the latter of which Seb coerced out of his sister’s arms by opening his. She was a tiny thing, hair a tangle of black against her soft, brown skin. Belle’s thoughts were simple, as a child’s often were, and Charles’ benevolent presence quickly untangled whatever negativity remained. Despite bearing the scars of recent trauma, both her and her sister’s minds were clear.

“You’re all safe,” Charles said to them once the final test—Ava’s—was complete. “Let’s make sure you stay that way.”

His eyes flickered to Alistaire, who hadn’t relaxed at all during the process. The doctor’s jaw clenched tightly and his hands curled into fists by his side. Under the weight of Charles’ gaze he faltered, but offered neither explanation nor argument as they readied the group to go.

Justice paced like a caged animal in his head, eager to find and destroy the evil that dared prey on such innocents. Charles wandered to the front of the group, ready to take point, only to stop at a tug on his pants leg.

He smiled at Belle, who offered her hand to him shyly. He slipped it into his and chuckled at the beatific smile that crossed her face. Seb took her other hand and Ava stayed behind Garrett, who brought up the rear with Alistaire.

They ran through the elaborate maze of interior halls that spread across the building, careful to avoid any minds that breached the outward field of Charles’ telepathy. The plan was to take them back to the main atrium, a place he was familiar with, and decide what to do from there.

Charles, Belle and Seb had just reached the connecting door when thick, black tendrils of smoke seeped in from underneath. A shadow leapt past the windowpane and Belle shrieked. Charles slung an arm over Seb’s chest in a protective gesture. He took a sharp step back, and dropped his hand to grope blindly for the children. Eyes glued to the door, he tugged the tiny fingers in his.

“Belle, my love, go hold Garrett’s hand. Ava, on his other side. Seb, with Alistaire.” The children shuffled around him, assembling in their designated places. “Alistaire, Garrett—there’s a fire door about ten paces up the hall. It leads to a medical storeroom. Try to open it. Go now!”

The two men fell away from him with the children nestled between them. Charles’ eyes never left the door. His telepathic senses, on the other hand, reached out to encompass the small group, felt as Garrett forced the lock.

It didn’t work.

In front of him, the shadow passed by the door again, smoke gathering readily underneath. He readied Justice, at the same time as Alistaire pulled on a lanyard around his neck and withdrew a key. He slotted it into the lock, sent up a half-prayer, and twisted.

That didn’t work either.

“Yes, Ava!” Charles boomed as the idea passed through the small girl’s thoughts. “Do it! Do it _now_!”

Ava’s mind turned from surprise to resolve. She gripped the door, gathered herself and pushed with all her might. The doors slammed open in an arc and struck the adjoining walls where they held by way of the magnetic strip on either side.

When they’d fled past it, Charles called, “Alistaire! Shut the door and lock it!”

“No!”

The door in front of Charles began to buckle.

“Do it!” he screamed. “Do it, do it, _do it_!”

Seb darted forward and pulled the doors from the magnetic hold. The lock slotted back into place with a small _click_. Charles sent his thanks to the small boy, and gave him the directions to the medical storeroom. The room had its own air-conditioning system and hermetically sealed doors. They would be safe for as long as they remained there, as long as it took Charles to get rid of whatever peril lie in wait outside.

Charles revelled in the silence for a split second, until it filled with a sound that almost stopped his heart.

_Screeeeeeeeeeeech._

His mind went blank, and then it hit him.

He tripped in his haste to get away from the door as it pummelled inwards. His back hit the opposing wall painfully, where he folded into a heap on the floor. Charles was back on his feet in seconds, though, moving quickly down the now clear corridor.

As he retreated down the hall, he heard a sudden, otherworldly _boom!_ as the door finally yielded to the weight of the darkness behind it.

Charles ran flat out, dived around the corner where he faced another, identical hallway. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Relief filtered through him at the thought. He no longer had the burden of other lives on his conscience, not immediately anyway. He sought out Alistaire’s mind and received the impression of hospital beds and tiny feet scuttling by him. They were safe.

For the moment.

‘ _You are doing well,’_ Justice remarked. He remained, ever-vigilant, in the back of Charles’ mind.

“I didn’t see it,” Charles said breathlessly as he ran. “What was it?”

‘ _I suspect it’s an abomination,’_ Justice mused thoughtfully, ‘ _a man whose mind has been ravaged by a demon, who has given his body over to the darkness for a promise that will never be fulfilled. They are dangerous, Charles, and must be stopped.’_

Charles nodded jerkily. “Is there any way to save them?”

‘ _No. It is not simply possession. The demon will have warped the body past any recognisable shape. No trace of the host remains.’_

He blinked away disorientation as the fluorescent lights above him flickered. It irritated him for a reason he couldn’t place. It wasn’t until he faced the charred doors of D-block that Charles realized he’d seen this place before.

Seen it? He’d been _right there_ , just shy of fifteen minutes ago, right before they found Garrett and the others.

Charles’ face fell.

In his attempt to flee, he’d run a circle back to the beginning, and if he was standing there like the blind fool he was, then—

His body tensed like a bowstring pulled taut as a dark shadow blocked the light. With his heart in his throat, Charles turned.

It was every nightmare he’d ever had made real.

“Not good,” he breathed. “Not good, not good, _not good._ ”

It stepped forward Charles veered back as if struck. It stood at seven feet—taller, even—shaped like a man but for the bulbous swell of flesh behind its head, the skin putrid and flaking. It hunched forward over arms like pincers, sharp slivers of bone protruding from each elbow. It had taken a human body and twisted it to shreds, darkened its hide to a livid red, purple veins pulsating down the length of its deformed torso. The mouth was a wide, gaping tear across its face and its eyes narrowed into slits as it stared at him hungrily.

Justice’s voice was a desperate, frantic roar in his head.

‘ _MOVE!’_

Charles dove at the same time as the creature hurled toward him at unimaginable speed. He crashed into the wall and scrambled to his feet. He sprinted to the threshold of the door and was off like a shot down the hall.

Justice instilled power in every step, all but threw him from surface to surface as the thing—‘ _it is an abomination, as I feared’_ the spirit rattled off as they skidded around the bend—gave chase. It had been a hair’s breadth away from him and Charles gagged at the half-formed memory of its rancid stench as he ran head-long through the next doorway and—

Straight into a dead end.

Charles swore under his breath as the abomination tore into the room after him and backed him into a corner among crates of gauze and analgesics. It loomed over him for a single, terrifying instant. Then it attacked.

Charles raised his hands on instinct. A hurricane of white-blue energy lanced from his fingers and hit the abomination square in the chest; it burned through a layer of thick, leathery skin and nearly blinded them both. Charles dodged the two thrashing arms as they sliced blindly through the air, used the nanoseconds of time he had before it regained itself to step a wide circle around it, and scurry for the entrance.

He threw everything he had into his escape, weaving through corridors, headed towards the one place that might grant him enough space to move rather than crash into things. The atrium was a risk, for he had no idea what to expect—it’s where the abomination had come from, after all. What if there were more out there, lying in wait? What if this was some kind of convoluted trap?

‘ _Then we will do as we have always done. We will fight.’_

Charles stumbled into the atrium and hesitated. It was empty.

He never got a chance to feel relieved.

The abomination shot out from the hall he’d just vacated and crashed straight into him. Charles flew for a split second before his back hit the opposing wall. It knocked the wind out of him, and it was just as well, for the abomination leaned into him with its rotten stench. Its pincers volleyed into the concrete on either side of Charles’ head and _through_ it, dust flying into his eyes and hair, filling his lungs when he finally took a breath. The pincers tightened until they held him by the throat, where they dragged his body up the length of the wall. He thrashed in their grip, tried desperately to pry them off him, but all it did was drive the sharp edges deeper into his skin.

Charles couldn’t speak, couldn’t _breathe._ He was having the life choked out of him and he couldn’t _move._

Suddenly, with a thunderous crash that reverberated loudly in his ears, the abomination plummeted to the floor, flattened by what appeared to be a bulkhead door. The door let out an ear-shattering shriek as it fused itself to the floor, its edges rippling into liquid until they cooled and hardened into place. The tiny fragments of metal rose like stringless puppets in the air, and it was then that Charles understood.

_Erik._

He watched with no small amount of disgust as the shrapnel embedded itself into the abomination’s rotting skin. The metal cut deep, _twisted_ , until all life left the creature’s soulless, black eyes.

Charles’ neck was warm. When he touched it with his fingers they came back slicked with blood. He felt a weight against the wound and looked up sharply—painfully—to see Erik craned over him in full Magneto attire. His eyebrows formed an angry pucker and his mouth was a strict line set into his face. The helmet took pride of place on his head, but even through it, Erik looked worried.

“Charles,” he whispered urgently. His gloved fingers ran up and down the deep, jagged cuts on either side of his neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Justice stretched out within him and Erik’s eyes widened as the flesh knitted back together.

Charles smiled weakly at him. “Good, isn’t it?”

Erik offered him a hand, which he took. Charles peered down at the blackened corpse of the abomination in disgust, then at Erik.

“It took you long enough. I was starting to think I’d lost you,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Behind the helmet, the corners of Erik’s lips twitched.

His eyes were warm when he replied. “Never.”

Raven swept through the carved out hole in the front door and threw her arms around Charles. He held her tightly. She collapsed into the embrace, her shoulders dropping as the tension drained out of her.

“Charles...” she whispered against his skin.

Charles buried his nose in her hair and breathed, deeply. He kissed her temple and pulled back to look at her. “Are you all right?”

Raven smiled at him, fraught around the edges but with genuine happiness. “I am.”

Charles returned her smile. “Good.”

“What’s the plan?” she asked the both of them. Charles and Erik looked at her, then at one another.

Erik straightened. “You know better than anyone what these things are capable of, Charles. Where do we go from here?”

“You read the letters, I assume? And Alex and Hank read theirs?”

Twin nods.

Charles breathed a sigh of relief. So long as his final instructions—a failsafe if anything happened to him and Justice—were in place, things could proceed as planned. He wracked his brain, reordered his priorities.

“Survivors,” he said immediately. “I met a group of four of them, but there are others in the cells. Justice can differentiate between who is possessed and who is not. I think Emma can recreate it with some help. Whether or not she’s willing to allow Justice into her mind, however, is a different story all together. That aside, you need to split into two teams—one attack, the other rescue.

“The rescue team needs at least one member capable of fighting off an attack equal to or greater than the abomination you just killed,” Charles motioned to the corpse, black blood spewing forth onto the atrium floor. “The attack team will do what it does best: fight. There’s no way to save a mutant once it becomes an abomination, but it’s possible that they might be saved if the demon hasn’t anchored itself too deep.”

“What about you?” Erik asked, honing in on Charles’ use of the word ‘you’ as opposed to ‘we’.

“Justice and I have our own mission.”

Raven crossed her arms over her chest, unimpressed. “Is this the part where you tell us nothing and expect us to go along with it?”

“Not at all,” Charles assured her with a confused frown, taken aback by the very idea of it. “I want Erik to come with me—”

“But—”

“—and I want _you_ to lead the attack team,” he finished.

“Me?” Raven said gapingly.

“Her?” Erik ribbed her with a sly smirk, completely unsurprised by Charles’ decision.

Charles smiled grimly at them both. “Absolutely. Hank will lead the rescue team. If Azazel and Emma accompany him, that should be enough—Hank will mediate, Emma will distinguish between the those possessed and Azazel can teleport the safe group out. All three are capable of handling themselves. You, Alex, Riptide and Angel will need to take care of any direct threats. Once they’re clear, you go on the offensive. Believe me when I say you’ll be able to tell who is friend and who is foe at that point.”

Erik nodded curtly. Then he asked, with some trepidation, “What of us?”

“Justice is certain that whatever caused this mess in the first place—the tear in the Veil, the possessions that followed—was transported here with the rest of the mutants.” He gestured to the area all around him. “That they are, in and of themselves, a mutant. The Veil was closed, but whatever demons remain in the minds of these people must be taken care of, which is why Hank and Raven’s missions are as vital as ours.”

Raven straightened to attention, both surprised and pleased by his regard for her.

“If we leave what caused this unattended, however, it could very well happen all over again. We at least need to figure out what it is, what it wants. Once we’ve done that, well,” he grinned, quirked an eyebrow at them both, “then it’s just a matter of taking out the trash.”

Raven departed with the attack team to sweep the corridors while the rescue team prepared for what they might find in the cells. Emma agreed to the transfer of information, albeit reluctantly and on the grounds of having as little contact with Justice as possible. Charles suspected Erik had something to do with her agreeing, though both members of the Brotherhood remained tight-lipped about their conversation.

He remained increasingly impressed by the speed in which everyone mobilised. Within fifteen minutes of their arrival to the base, one team was away with the other just as ready to depart. In the end, only Charles and Erik remained.

“Are you ready for this?” Charles asked, a smile tugging incessantly on his lips.

Erik’s answering grin was just as persistent.

“Let’s find out.”

- 

They were half-way to D-block when another explosion shook the base.

Charles sent a frantic call out to both teams, receiving immediate responses from Raven and Hank. Neither team was involved, but Emma reported feeling a strange pressure in her head before it happened. Charles received the news and Erik watched him carefully.

“Is this what we’re after?” he asked after Charles told him both of the team’s status and Emma’s report.

Charles sent him a sideways glance, eyes hard. “Yes, it is.”

Erik’s fingers curled around his wrist to stop him.

When Charles turned to face him, he said, “Then we retrace Emma’s footsteps and go from there.”

Emma led them further into the complex, to the opposite side of the holding cells where the heaviness had started to affect her. They passed the wreckage of the first explosion, darting around the place where Charles pinned Alistaire to the ground not a half an hour before. They skirted rooms both blistered and charred, all but hollowed out by the blast, heavy doors busted off their hinges lie strewn in the hallways. The numbers counted down from the forties, to the thirties, to the twenties, to the tens until at last they rounded the final bend and stopped.

Charles saw the culprit immediately. The surrounding cells were pulverised by the white-hot flare of the explosion and at its epicentre was designation D-8. The room suffered catastrophic damage, the inner walls especially. Erik lifted the metal beams with a wave of his hand, using them to shift the non-magnetic debris out of the way. They searched the room for any sign of the subject within, but to no avail.

It was empty, the mutant long gone in their escape.

‘ _There is a disturbance deep within this place, Charles,’_ Justice whispered urgently. _‘We must head there as soon as possible. I have never felt something so volatile. I am certain this force is what sundered the Veil.’_

“Further,” he said to Erik, “Justice has a bead on its location.”

Erik bowed his head and motioned for Charles to take the lead.

“How can Justice sense it?” he asked as they ran. “He wasn’t able to before.”

Justice guided him through several connecting rooms before he replied to Erik. They weaved between workstations and research labs, through the heart of the base’s R&D section—C-block, if Charles remembered correctly.

‘ _I do not know. Does it matter, if I can lead us to what we seek?’_

Charles told Erik, who agreed that it didn’t.

They broke through the last lab and into the development sector, a set of wide rooms ringed with shelves of trinkets. Charles could almost hear the hum in the air when Erik reached out to the thick plated metal that lined the walls.

As they stumbled towards the entrance of the second room, however, they both stopped dead.

Three abominations stood in a wide circle around a small, quivering figure in a blackened hospital gown. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Is that a... is that a _child?_ ” Erik asked incredulously.

It was.

A little girl, her features imperceptible in the flickering light. She shrank in on herself as the abominations closed in, a smaller target harder to strike down. Charles’ heart leapt to his throat at the sight. Her thoughts were a frantic tangle in his head, a litany of fear, fear, fear, _fear_.

Charles stole a glance at Erik as Justice fluxed to the surface, bathing his world in incandescent light. Erik bared his teeth at the abominations.

Then, as one, they attacked.

Justice dealt a staggering blow to the middle of the first abomination’s chest with a chain of lightning. It reared back, pincers flailing, as the lightning cut through the thick sacks of skin across its mid-section.

The spirit reared back to avoid them, positioning Charles several feet away from the three, grotesque creatures. Then, he lashed out with all his might. Electricity lanced through the air, between his outstretched hands, encircling two of them in a constant current they could neither run from nor parry.

Erik appeared by his side to take down the third abomination, a deafening screech of metal on metal as he drove a thick steel strut through its chest. Black blood exploded from the newly formed hole in its torso, dribbled down in rivulets over its decaying skin. He curled his fingers, lifting it effortlessly into the air, abomination and all. When the creature-strut hybrid touched the ceiling, Erik released his hold and sent it slamming to the ground. The metal fused to the floor, a coffin of serrated steel.

Charles threw everything into the effort. His body flew from one location to the next, dodging and weaving, lighting up the room with the physical manifestation of Justice’s might. Unseen by all but felt by the abominations, he honed his telepathy into a psionic attack meant to disarm. What happened instead was a bizarre sort of—

“Did you just _liquefy its brain_?” Erik called to him, mouth agape, as the second abomination collapsed under an invisible hand.

“I... think so?”

A wicked grin curved Erik’s mouth. “Do it again.”

He did.

The last creature writhed in agony under the weight of his assault, emitted a sharp howling noise. Charles thought nothing of it and continued to bombard it with raw telepathic feedback, until Erik bellowed, “Charles! Behind you!”

Charles turned.

His stomach dropped.

‘ _Shades,’_ Justice said. ‘ _Lower-level demons of sloth and hunger, not as powerful as the abominations for they do not have a host, but they are elusive, nimble and mindless. For this reason, they may be impervious to your telepathic attacks.’_

Charles felt a rush of trepidation. “The Veil?”

 _‘The Veil remains intact,’_ the spirit said sagely. ‘ _The shades come when an abomination calls for them. I do not believe they can enter this world without them, for they would be far greater in number if that were so.’_

The shades were wraiths of shadow, row upon row of sharp teeth set into an uneven, unhinged jaw. They oscillated in the air from beings of smoke to substance. Justice was right—when he reached out telepathically, they slipped out of his reach.

But they couldn’t escape from Erik.

Or Justice.

Charles breached the abomination’s mind with a surge of power that killed it instantly. Justice pulverised the body until it was nothing but a track of blood across the floor. Then he turned to the shades.

In their shared mind, Charles felt Justice throb with energy, so bright it would have blinded him had the spirit radiated it bodily. Forks of lightning churned from Charles’ fingertips. With a flick of his wrist, they coalesced in the air, sharp as daggers. He fashioned them into a tight sphere and lobbed it at the shades the way a pitcher would a baseball.

It came down in a glorious arc, hit their ranks and fragmented.

Two of the shades closest to the blast erupted in twin geysers of grey-black gore. Three others sustained heavy damage, steadily leaking the same, thick sludge. They rushed at him and Charles braced for attack.

Erik tackled him out of the way instead, throwing down as much metal as he could muster over the oncoming wave of smoky black limbs and twisted, bared jowls. The sound rattled them both, the discordant groan of metal and the high-pitched whine of the shades as it crushed them.

“Whatever you did, keep doing it!” Erik yelled over the din. He motioned to the section of roof that had just caved in and the demons pinned underneath. “They don’t change as quickly when wounded—that lightning’s the only thing that’s getting through!”

Charles staggered to his feet, offered a hand to Erik and hauled him up when he took it.

“How many?” Charles called.

“Three.”

‘ _Four,_ ’ Justice insisted.

In the end, it didn’t matter; he was already on the move.

“If I believe there’s metal, there’ll be metal, right?” Charles asked Justice, who agreed with confusion. “What if I believe in _this_?”

Charles summoned the power and released it in a blinding pulse at the remaining shades. The light struck, but died out quickly, vanishing into the air. Charles watched expectantly as they surged towards him.

Nothing happened.

They kept coming, trailing him with renewed interest.

Charles didn’t move, just stood there.

They descended on him like a pack of rampaging beasts until suddenly they stopped.

Almost upon him, Charles watched first-hand as their black hides transformed into cold, cracked white. Ice crystallised across their torsos and froze them into place, suspending them mid-lunge.

 _Exactly_ how he had envisioned it.

Charles released a giddy laugh. “That actually worked!”

Erik summoned every shred of metal the structure around them could spare and threw it with all his might. Support beams, service hatches, _entire doors_ came careening forward to answer his call. They shattered the shades into a thousand shards of ice.

For a long moment, there was nothing but silence as both Charles and Erik stayed on their guard for more enemies.

None came.

The dust settled and Erik made his way over to Charles, slogging through debris and essence of demon. He gathered Charles by his side, drew him close and laughed loudly in his ear. Then he kissed him firmly on the mouth.

Charles smiled into the kiss, made to wrap his arms around Erik’s shoulders.

Erik keeled back abruptly.

Confused, Charles pulled away and met his eyes. His wide, horrified eyes.

From the pools of grey-black blood surrounding them came a new demon, a greater one. Charles watched it form over Erik’s shoulder, the demon’s new body rippling to connect to a gargantuan, clawed forearm suspended in the air right in front of him.

Air already occupied by someone else.

Charles’ face went slack with horror.

_No._

Erik’s body arched violently inwards and he vomited a fountain of blood.

_No._

He crumpled to the floor, red spilling out across the fabric of his uniform.

_No._

Charles fell to his knees beside him.

_No._

Tears trickled from his eyes as his fingers worked to stop the bleeding, Erik’s pain-ridden face white underneath the helmet.

“Erik!” Charles panted, hands slipping in the blood. In _Erik’s_ blood. “Stay–Stay with me—Erik, _please_!”

Erik looked up at him in a daze. “Charles—?”

“I’m here,” he said, sobbing brokenly. “I’m here, Erik, I’m here.”

“Good.” Erik smiled through bloodstained lips. He raised a hand and palmed Charles’ face, fingers brushing his cheeks. “Stop it. Stop crying.”

Charles’ face twisted in grief.

“I–I can’t, I—” he gasped for breath, his lungs burning, but it wouldn’t come.

Erik’s eyebrows drew together in concern and Charles— _couldn’t_.

“I’ll try,” he promised anyway, “I’ll try Erik, but you have to try too, okay?”

Charles reached deep into the cavern of his thoughts and screamed for Justice. He screamed until his voice was hoarse and then screamed again, harder, until it bled, until it ripped and tore and sundered and wrenched.

Finally, after an eternity of calling, the spirit crystallized around him in a panic.

“Please,” Charles begged, mind in a state of catastrophic failure. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe—not with Erik lying there, bleeding, _dying_. “Justice, you have to—you have to help him, you have to save him, you—”

‘ _Take me to him,’_ Justice demanded, ‘ _and I will do all I can.’_

Charles threw them to the surface, where his hands continued to compress on the gaping wound over Erik’s chest, and pulled the helmet from his head. Erik watched him with grey-blue eyes that smouldered. Blood dribbled out from his mouth and onto Charles’ sleeve.

‘ _The wound is deep. Too deep for me to heal and hold onto the demon at the same time. If I have any hope of saving him, we_ must _get rid of it first,’_ Justice urged. _‘This will be for naught if it finishes you both.’_

“No,” he said.

_‘Charles!’_

“ _No_ ,” he repeated, harder this time. “I can’t fight while he’s—while he’s _dying._ I won’t.”

‘ _I can suspend him and his wounds far easier than I can hold this demon!’_ Justice roared. _‘The metal-ca—_ Erik _, will be fine. I swear to you.’_

Erik was near motionless in his arms. His eyes drifted closed as Charles looked upon him, though he continued to breathe slow and shallowly. His cheeks had drained of all color, blood still gushing steadily out of the wound. He wouldn’t last five minutes without Justice’s help.

“Do it,” he whispered.

Justice cocooned Erik’s body in a brilliant billow of light. Charles looked down in awe at him, then at the monstrosity slowly unfurling in front of him. He felt pure, unadulterated rage rise to his throat. _This_ was what threatened to take Erik away from him.

It would not endure.

The demon stared at him through ten, soulless eyes set in the middle of a ribbed forehead. It was purple-skinned and _huge_ , ten times his size at least. Its hide was armoured with long, jagged spikes that erupted from the shoulders and torso, stopping at its arms, which were thick and corded, but continuing at its hands like gloves made of sharp protrusions of bone.

Charles returned its gaze with absolute hatred.

“If he dies,” he said in a voice devoid of all emotion, “I will find you and I will gut you. I will ruin your world, I will raze it to the ground and I will never stop searching until I find a way back to him.”

Justice coiled tightly, ready to strike, but Charles shook him away. No.

This one was his.

With purposeful slowness, Charles raised his hand to his temple.

His mind was a hurricane of distress and blackened pages. He tried to form an attack, but the materials at his feet were broken and bent. With nothing else to call upon, Charles tapped into the area of his thoughts that housed his memories of Erik—one of the thick, wooden lockboxes impervious to all but the most devastating assault. Metal spewed from the open lid of the box and splintered, fragments of steel and glass joining the cyclone in his head. He had a half-formed thought, a memory of Erik’s mind refining itself to attack against Emma.

Charles glanced between the memory—the full force of Erik’s frustration channelled into a psionic burst—and the hurricane overhead.

Then he smiled.

He took the metal shards and contracted them to a razor-sharp point. It hung like a behemoth in the dull, blue light of the library, glistened with nefarious purpose, a leviathan of glass and steel among the torn books and ravaged shelves. Charles stared at his creation, a combination of his darkest parts shaped equally by his memory of Erik, and his smile grew scathing.

He released the onslaught.

- 

It was a breathtaking sight.

The demon, twenty feet of solid destruction, fell to its knees before the tiny figure of Charles Xavier, who didn’t hesitate to lash out again. His weapon, the onslaught, flew back to him like a boomerang every time, powered near perpetually by his rage.

He sharpened it, his glimmering knife, and buried it to the hilt in the demon’s twisted mind. It screeched, a bloodcurdling roar of agony. Charles reveled in it, consumed by the thought of vengeance. He would make good on his promise.

If Erik died, the world was going with him.

Charles felt a fear that wasn’t his own. It took him several seconds to realize it was Justice. He chuckled at the thought. What could _Justice_ be afraid of? The situation was perfectly under control. Seeking out an explanation was too much work, so Charles just plucked the answer directly from the spirit’s consciousness. He spread it before him and saw—

Himself.

Consumed, enraptured, _possessed._

Justice’s thoughts were panic-stricken, distraught by the very idea of Charles falling victim to his own anger.

Charles loosened his hold on the blade as life returned to him. Then he dropped it.

The weapon slipped away from him, hit the thick, carpeted floor of the library with a dull sound _._ He kicked it away, disgusted by the thought of it, the way he wanted nothing more than to pick it up again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Justice and Erik, whose life he would have forfeited. “I’m so sorry.”

 _‘We will have time for this later,’_ Justice reasoned, ‘ _but we must concentrate!’_

He was right. The demon, while crippled by Charles’ blow, regained itself quickly. Charles had a fraction of a second to escape before its fist came thundering down. He dove to the left with a burst of speed facilitated by Justice, ready to turn back when a hideous _crack_ filled his ears.

Charles spun instantly, propelling backwards as he did so, away from the demon’s humongous frame as it slammed to the ground and didn’t move.

Charles stared at it in astonishment. It was...

It was _dead_.

But if he and Justice hadn’t, then who—

Weight, thick and unrelenting, hit him square in the back of the head. Charles stumbled, would have fallen if not for the spirit, who steadied him. He breathed through clenched teeth as the pressure intensified.

Charles looked up, eyes searching the room for something— _anything_ —that could explain the sudden pounding in his head, or the ragged corpse of the demon a few feet away. There was nothing, the room was empty.

Then, he saw her.

The girl.

She stepped forward.

Charles staggered, clutching blindly at his temples as the pain increased.

Justice called his name over the din, a hard note of concern in his voice. ‘ _—at her eyes! Look!’_

Lifting his head was torture, but he did.

The girl’s eyes lit up from the inside with a preternatural light, not unlike his when Justice assumed control. While his turned a benevolent white, however, hers were a bright, piercing red. The same psionic pressure he had felt before the explosion returned in full force now, breathtaking in its agony. He crumpled at her feet—her small, bare feet, which closed in on him where he convulsed in pain.

‘ _J–Justice... is she?’_

Justice’s reply was distant, as if filtered through several different channels of noise. There was a wall, he realized, that he’d erected instinctively to protect Justice—and, by extension, Erik—from the destructive weight. _‘“She” is a mutant like you—what your people call a telepath. The entity inside of her, however, doesn’t belong to either of our worlds. Rather, it is... transcendent.’_

Charles flinched violently as the girl reached down to touch him. She stared at him with eyes that burned, twin fires of molten red. She placed her hand on his cheek and the wave of pain inside him crested and broke. Charles whimpered into her fingers, muffled a sob into her palm. The red-hot pulse of her power tore through his shields like they were tissue paper, threatened to destroy his body just the same.

“P–Please,” he begged, tears seeping from his eyes. They collected against her fingertips. “ _Please.”_

Charles shuddered as the pain sliced further still, the girl ignorant to his pleas. The tears trickled out in earnest, hot and blinding.

He felt something inside him shatter.

_‘“Do NOT make this child a murderer!”’_

Justice’s voice boomed from Charles’ lips, harmonizing together to form a deep, commanding pitch. The girl pulled back as if struck, eyes flickering from red to green in shock. They had a split second to seize her, but Charles froze up in fear and pain.

Justice did not.

The spirit shattered the wall of white noise that existed between them and threw the full force of his strength at the entity, blinking out of existence for a brief moment before reappearing in the girl’s head. He pulled Charles along with him, knee-deep into her thoughts, the courtyard to the magnificent castle of her mind. Charles ran to the front door, pushed it open and caught a glimpse of the child behind it all.

She was beautiful, a shimmering haze of green and gold that sparkled off every wall in the palace.

But her mind, her mind was _terrified_. It dove for his, her tiny fingers scrabbling for a handhold, desperately trying to reach him before she slipped away entirely. He dove for her blindly, unwilling to let her fall.

His fingertips grazed her wrist and he jerked forward, pulled headfirst into a memory. Her memory.

_The hospital is loud and bright, the people are busy and they overlook her again and again until she screams with every sense she has, begging for the pain to stop—_

_—splintering, agonising pain as Annie, bright beautiful Annie, slips away from her, and Annie’s final thought is how she looks like an angel, red hair like fire in the light, shining like rubies, and will she meet the angels when she dies?—_

_—her screams echo through hundreds, fell them, push them to breaking point like the doctor pushes the needle into her neck—_

_—neck snapped, wrong angle, everything about it wrong, where’s the light in your eyes, mommy, where did it go and can she find it again?—_

_—she wakes up alone in a place within a place, with nothing and no one, not a friend or a stranger and she aches, aches for home, for mommy and daddy and Annie, for anything but the cold and dark and fear—_

_—fear, fear, fear, fear, there are men who come and don’t speak like the doctors who didn’t speak, where is she?—_

_—the bird reaches out with blinding wing to touch her face, bows its head to her and taps its beak on her shoulder—_

_—they take her, wrench her out of her room, the little black place, and pull her along without kindness, like the car hit Annie without kindness, like her family died without kindness, there is no kindness so why, pray tell, should she be kind?—_

_—its feathers feel like home—_

_—they marvel at the red and the black in the air but she does not, it looks like rubies, like her hair, like the bird’s fire eyes and like blood, it looks like shadow and darkness and her little black place and Annie’s mind as all the music left her—_

_—‘firebird,’ she whispers, ‘what is your name?’—_

_—they ask her how she did it, how she did the impossible, but she didn’t, it wasn’t her, it was—_

_—‘Phoenix,’ it replies, ‘and what should I call you, little one?’—_

_—not her, not her, she screams but they don’t listen, they haven’t listened, she wants to go home but she has no home to go to—_

— _‘my name is Jean,’ she says, ‘and I am not little’—_

_—it hurts, the truth—_

_—‘no,’ Phoenix says, ‘you’re not little at all, are you?’_

Jean stared at him with wide, frightened eyes set into ashen skin. Her dark red hair trickled over her shoulders in waves, billowed behind her in the storm of light and sound that consumed them both. Her fingers latched on tightly, frantically to his. Charles held her fast, swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought of all she had endured. A ten-year-old girl, a mere _child_ , forced to see the world and all its evils so early.

It occurred to him that they weren’t so different. Aside from the obvious telepathy, the entity—this Phoenix—had arrived to protect her just as Justice protected him. It tore through the fabric of reality to find her and keep her safe.

Now they came together on the skyline, twin gigantic figures battling in the distance—one a colossal suit of armor, the other a bird of prey.

Justice and the Phoenix.

Justice loosed a tempest upon the bird, which crashed to the ground in a shock of red-orange feathers. Jean whimpered by Charles’ side, but made no move to intervene. They watched in trepidation as the Phoenix raised its fiery head, black eyes staring menacingly down the line at Justice, who readied his next attack by gripping his sword in both hands.

The bird reared up, quick as a flash, and smashed into his breastplate. The twin cuts burned through the metal, corroding it in an instant.

Justice roared, a clap of thunder in the sky, and swung the sword in his gauntleted hands with all his might.

Lightning lanced out to scorch the Phoenix’s plumage as the blade cut deep into its flank. Rather than wound the bird, the lightning appeared to power it. As Justice wrenched his sword from its body, a vicious trail of fire and blood, the gash knitted slowly back together.

Charles felt his chest tighten at the realization:

The Phoenix had healed where Justice hadn’t.

It dodged his next blow by flying high above his head into the turbulent clouds. Justice’s arm completed the arc, striking nothing but air. He turned in a slow circle, helmeted head darting from side to side, looking hard into the grey sky. With a wave of his hand, Justice purged the storm clouds. Charles felt a wave of trepidation crest over him when they parted to reveal nothing but bottomless blue.

_Where was the Phoenix?_

Beside him, Jean screamed and Charles’ eyes flew immediately to her. So did Justice’s—the spirit spun to face them, sword at the ready. They all stood stock-still, staring at one another. Then, the most curious thing of all happened.

Justice dropped the sword.

It disappeared into the treeline, hitting the forest floor with a dull rumble. Justice stared at his hands, then at Charles and although the helmet hid his face—if indeed he had a face—Charles felt his alarm.

The spirit staggered back as the two deep lesions on his breastplate ate through the last of its protective metal. Their corruption was a venomous fire that sapped at his strength, dulling the light that burned ferociously inside him until it was nothing more than the faint glow.

 _‘I am sorry,'_  said Justice as the last of his light faded.

Then, he was gone, leaving Charles bereft beside Jean—Jean, who breathed harshly into her hands, horrified by her protector’s actions.

Charles felt the loss like a hole in his head.

His library fell into darkness; no light could permeate its hollow reaches. It didn’t make sense, the level of his grief, for he knew that Justice would leave him, that their time together would draw to its inevitable end, an end that would have come sooner rather than later. He _knew_ it, and yet... He didn’t think it would happen, not like this.

An ice-cold shiver of fear ran down his spine as Charles had a second, infinitely more horrifying realization.

_Erik._

Justice’s power was the only thing keeping him alive. If he was gone, then—

Justice’s light was gone, the pool of blood beneath Erik growing steadily. His mind, a tiny flame at the edge of Charles’ consciousness, flickered out completely. Raw panic trickled through his veins, pulled him bodily to the floor where he shook Erik’s shoulders in desperation.

“Erik?”

Erik’s head lolled to the side, heavy and lifeless. Charles shook him again, harder this time.

“ _Erik!_ ”

No response.

He placed his hands over Erik’s heart and pumped brutally, repeatedly, reared back and fused his mouth to Erik’s, pinched open his nose and _blew_ the life into him. He breathed into Erik until his own lungs contracted in pain, and further still, until black spots danced at the edge of his vision. Charles released a sob of frustration as he pulled away.

“It can’t end like this,” he whispered, stroking the damp hair off Erik’s forehead. He made a desperate, keening sound against his skin as he dropped his face to Erik's and kissed his bloodstained lips.

“I won’t let it end like this.”

Charles shut his eyes. When he opened them, he was back in the swirling abyss between his thoughts and Jean’s.

The Phoenix stared down its beak at him, its flame body tightly coiled, ready to strike.

He stared at it in defiance. “You've already taken everything from me. Do your worst.”

The bird reared back, talons extended. Then, it attacked.

A psionic explosion unlike nothing he had ever felt ripped through Jean’s mind as the little girl threw herself in front of him at the last moment, taking in the full force of the blow. The Phoenix faltered; for all its foresight, all its power, it had never anticipated _this_.

Its devastating force shattered every window of the palace, glass falling like rain. The doors thundered off their hinges, the wood obliterated by the white-hot fire of the Phoenix’s attack. Jean screamed in pain as the foundations blew out, frame splintering with a dreadful _crack._

The Phoenix surged forth in a panic, sending a wave of fire to eradicate the broken glass, attempting to right the wrongs it had committed in blind rage. Understanding in an instant that there was no way out for her, Jean did the only thing she could think to do.

Charles’ eyes widened.

 _‘NO!’_ he screamed, lungs straining from the force. _‘This isn’t what I want! Jean, you can’t, you—’_

Too late.

With all her remaining power, Jean placed her tiny hand against Charles’ chest and pushed.

The concussion wave wrenched Charles from her mind and back into his own. He hit the ground painfully, leg twisting at an unnatural angle. Charles was oblivious to the pain as he raised his head, consumed by a far greater agony.

Hot tears slipped down his face, body desperate for air but heaving sob after broken sob instead.

Erik.

Justice.

Jean.

All of them, gone.

Because of he failed.

He screamed his anguish into the cold, unforgiving ground, his thoughts a desperate litany of Erik’s name. His mind was an open wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding, cascading.

The starbursts in his vision faded, but Charles didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore. He blinked mechanically through the haze of tears until his eyes adjusted. A deep, sweeping numbness spread from his gut, ice-cold against his skin.

He struggled to lift his head, unwilling to see the carnage but powerless not to. He deserved so much worse for what he had done... what he had failed to do. Bile rose to his throat, threatened to choke him as he forced himself to stare at the broken bodies, to square his gaze and let every horrific inch of the scene sink in. Charles looked up, and every cell in his body screamed for mercy.

He was staring at a dream.

Erik’s body blanketed Jean’s, arms wrapped tightly around her small, shuddering frame as she sobbed loudly into his chest. Erik lowered his head to Jean’s, carded his fingers gently through her hair and whispered into her ear. The little girl sobbed harder, but the tight lid she held on her grief was broken now.

Charles crawled his way over to them, body slackening with every pull as it jostled his broken leg. The pain was a dull roar in the back of his mind, leeched away by a far more dangerous feeling—hope. His arms gave out underneath him, but he was close enough now to hear the words Erik spoke under his breath to Jean.

It was the most disarmingly beautiful display he had ever witnessed in his life. All of Erik's trust, his love, relinquished in a single touch. He and Jean existed in a cocoon of warmth, separate from reality, in a world of their own. Charles, given but a glimpse of this world, this unreality, this strange new terrain, felt moved to tears.

Erik touched Jean like she was something precious, something to be protected, nurtured and loved. His fire-bright mind was a tight pocket of metallic energy around hers, the helmet long discarded in favor of comforting her in every way possible. 

Erik’s eyes met his on cue and he smiled. It was a smile of secrets, a smile just for him. Charles felt a pull low in his chest, guiding him to its central source, to the heat in Erik’s eyes and the promise in his thoughts. His voice murmured the words to Jean at the same time as he thought them to Charles—a song, a litany, a prayer...

...a guiding light, a glimmer of hope, passed from one bookend of a soul to the other.

“You’re not alone,” Erik whispered.

_Charles, you’re not alone._


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings apply for ABSOLUTE RIDICULOUSNESS. Honestly, it has to be warned, because it's like all the angst got squeezed out of this story in Parts I-V, but so did all the substance, so this epilogue is pretty much me slapping a happy face sticker on it, tying up a few loose ends and proclaiming it done.
> 
> Also warning for adorkableness, Erik's inappropriate timing and no actual delivery on the sex front (is no sex better than "oh god this author has totally butchered this" sex?).
> 
> Also, this epilogue is unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine.

Erik turned his face into the pillow to chase away the voices in his head—to chase away the voice, singular, whose softly spoken words persisted, even as their owner had long since disappeared. He missed Charles in the mornings most of all, when the bed beside him was empty and cold. It had been a long six months and he still struggled to reconcile the decisions he’d made.

Raven’s hand stroked mindless patterns into his hair and he sighed softly. He craned his head to look at her, perched beside him on the bed in her nightgown, golden eyes gleaming in the mid-morning light. He watched her for a time, the cant of her head and the soft flutter of her sleeve against her scaled, blue skin as she massaged his hair with her fingertips.

The half-smile on his face dropped when he looked past her.

Sprawled out on top of the covers, fully clothed and sleeping soundly, was Azazel.

Raven followed his gaze and poked the slumbering mutant with the heel of her foot. “Проснись и пой!”

Azazel stirred awake, mouthing a soft litany of Russian into Erik’s favorite pillow, conveniently missing from its usual place behind his head. As Erik glared daggers at Raven and her pillow-thieving boyfriend, he decided she should be thankful that he wasn’t _literally_ glaring daggers at them, because he could absolutely do that if he wanted to. His cause was as good as lost, though, since Raven remained impervious to his threats—something that provided an endless source of frustration (his) and amusement (hers) for the whole house.

Erik lowered his figurative daggers at the soft look on Raven’s face as she peered down at him.

“Are you all right?” she asked, like she had every day for the past six months, still ready to mobilize on his mark.

Erik answered her every day, without fail, exactly the same way.

“Yes.”

He struggled to reconcile his decisions but he hadn’t regretted them yet. Returning to Westchester with half the Brotherhood in tow and seeing the look of delight on Charles’ face was one decision he would never take back—unless it was to see that look for the first time all over again.

He didn’t know how long it would last, how long the itch would stay buried if it ever resurfaced at all. He wasn’t lying when he told Charles his memories had changed him, but how much remained a mystery to them both.

For now, Westchester was his home, though it was less the physical location that mattered and more the small family they had made.

After Raven and Azazel banished him from his own bed, Erik wandered into the kitchen, barefoot, and growled at the distinct lack of caffeine in his vicinity. He sat at the kitchen table and put his head into his hands, massaged his temples and tried his hardest not to hate the world and all of its three billion inhabitants.

He heard the soft _clink_ of china and a thin plume of heat as a steaming mug of coffee was placed by his elbow. He glanced up sharply and received a fleeting glimpse of Ororo’s shy smile as the girl dashed away into the hall, her bright sundress a blur of colour as she ran.

Erik followed her scampering frame with his eyes until she disappeared around the corner, and dropped his eyes to the mug.

He sipped the coffee slowly, revelled in its taste.

The world and _most_ of its three billion inhabitants.

-

Ororo was studying botany in the greenhouse with Hank and Sean when he sought her out to thank her. Erik stayed, engaged her for a time, and learnt more than he ever needed to know about seeds and soil samples as a result.

She held out a thick stem on which several small, white flowers had grown clustered together. The color inside differed from flower to flower, he noticed idly—some were yellow inside, while others were a crisp, bright pink. He decided it was worth the risk of ridicule by voicing his observation. His effort paid off when Ororo’s entire face lit up in happiness.

“They’re blossoms,” she explained, voice calm but enthused. She twirled the stem around in her small hands and motioned for Erik to take it from her. He did, and mimicked her unconsciously.

Erik watched the colors blur together—white-yellow-white-pink, white-yellow-white-pink—with a detached sort of contentment.

He smiled indulgently at Ororo. “Go on.”

“These ones are special,” she said and touched the flower petals with a reverence not usually shown to plants already cut. He supposed this one was rather beautiful, however. “They’re chestnut blossoms.”

“I see,” said Erik, though he really didn’t.

Ororo giggled.

“Doctor McCoy teaches me about science, which is good, but Mr Cassidy teaches me about the meanings of the flowers, which is _fun._ ”

Erik plucked at one of the small, white flowers. “So what do chestnut blossoms mean, then?”

Ororo smiled evenly and tilted her head to the side, observing him closely as she said, “The chestnut blossom means ‘do me justice’.”

His eyes snapped up to seek hers. Ororo’s smile grew wider.

“The Professor did say your reaction would be good,” she said pensively.

“ _Charles_ knows about this?” Erik asked incredulously. She giggled again as Erik realized precisely how uninspired that question was. Of _course_ Charles knew. Charles knew everything. Except, apparently, when Erik ought to be informed of things.

“Where do they grow?” he asked her, offhandedly. Ororo pointed to the back entrance of the greenhouse.

Erik tucked a tiny blossom behind her ear, brushing her soft, white hair as he did so. He stood, straightened his chair and nodded to Hank and Sean out the corner of his eye. Then he knelt down and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, meine Prinzessin.”

“Königin,” Ororo corrected happily, busying herself by holding the chestnut blossoms to the light.

“My mistake,” Erik said with a low bow and a half-smile, “Königin.”

She nodded regally, “Diener.”

Erik chuckled and bade her farewell, heading to the chestnut blossoms and Charles.

He stood at the gateway leading to the outside garden and revelled in the sight of both.

Charles had tucked the sleeves of his light blue button-down shirt to his elbows, revealing the smooth, freckled skin underneath. He stood before a gigantic green bush dotted with offshoots of small, white flowers. Erik closed in and pressed the line of his body against Charles’, hands flying to the other man’s waist to hold him steady. Charles didn’t startle, was undoubtedly in the room from the very beginning of his conversation with Ororo. What would once have disturbed him now left him with a sense of fond exasperation for Charles’ antics.

He cinched his arms tightly around Charles and nuzzled into his neck, rewarded with a gasp of surprised pleasure. He pressed firm, wet kisses to the exposed skin, warmed by the mid-day sun and the steady burn of his exertion as Charles tended to the blossoms. Erik smiled at the domesticity, marvelled at it; the thought hadn’t bothered him for a long time. He enjoyed these days most of all in fact, where nothing went to plan because there was no plan, where life was exciting and dull by degrees, but always, always happy.

Charles turned in his embrace.

“Hello Erik,” he said. “Sleep well?”

Erik’s lips twitched. Charles knew he’d been awake for the past few hours, and that yes, Erik did sleep well—very well, in fact, courtesy of a certain late-night activity they were both present for (that took place _after_ chess).

“Terribly,” he replied, with the knowledge that both his mind and body spoke otherwise.

Charles made an amused sound in the back of his throat and kissed him lightly. Then, he drew away to face the blossoms once more. Erik dropped one arm to his side but kept the other wrapped around Charles.

“How long have you know?” Erik asked him quietly.

“A week,” Charles said with a sad smile, side-eying Erik to garner his reaction.

His face remained decidedly blank. It wasn’t a trick, either. Erik honestly didn’t know how to feel about it.

Sensing his uncertainty, Charles explained, “I was waiting for you. You knew him too, after all.”

He did, although not quite as intimately as Charles, and certainly not as long as he had.

Erik felt the phantom pain of the demon’s hand through his chest and flinched. Beside him, Charles copied the movement, face falling in remembered agony. He swept over the disjointed memories that followed, of staring up at Charles’ face and wondering why he was crying, towards the moment when a ripple of peace settled over him. It bathed his wounds, cleansed him of the darkness he felt encroaching on his thoughts and eradicated any trace of doubt from his mind. There had been a terrifying moment where it faded, where Erik felt none of its warmth and every bit of the cold darkness that lingered beneath it, but then it had returned. _Justice_ had returned, to fulfil his final promise.

Charles’ breath hitched beside him. Erik glanced over in time to see a tear roll slowly down his cheek.

“I’d made peace with him leaving long before we embarked on that mission. But there were still things I wanted to say that I never got the chance to and it _hurts_...” he trailed off, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He shook his head in frustration with himself. “But you know this already. I’ve talked about it often enough.”

Erik did know, but he didn’t mind hearing it again. He told him as much.

“Thank you,” Charles said sincerely, the lines of his face relaxing, “I think this might be the last time I have to say so, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Charles thumbed a tiny bud, ran his fingertips along the white undersides of the flowers. Erik followed them with his eyes, the way they dipped and curled into the farthest reaches of everything they touched. It was the very definition of Charles, slotting himself into all the empty spaces to become exactly what they needed when they needed it most. “Ororo told you about their meaning, yes?”

Erik nodded, wondering where this was going. Charles picked up the thought and smiled.

_‘Good things come to those who wait.’_

_‘That isn’t what you said last night,’_ Erik quipped back with a grin.

“Erik!” Charles said, appropriately scandalized. Erik took immense pleasure in seeing him blush like that. “There are children about!”

“We weren’t talking, Charles, not in the conventional sense,” he reminded him.

“Jean’s a telepath,” Charles observed.

“ _Jean_ is away on a field trip. Alistaire picked her up this afternoon. I have no idea what she sees in him,” he added grumpily.

Charles’ smile became knowing. “A medical degree, perhaps?”

Jean had been insisting for the past few months that the only thing she was interested in becoming was a doctor. Also, a gymnast. And a beautician. And a race-car driver. And an astronaut. And the President of the United States. This time, however, she actually had someone who could mentor her; Erik didn’t want to admit it, but this dream stood a chance of enduring.

He did the only thing he could do when confronting a topic he didn’t want to talk about. He changed the subject.

“What else is so special about these blossoms, then, if not their meaning?”

He reached out to pluck one from its stem, only to have his hand slapped away by Charles. Erik’s eyebrows reached for his hairline. Charles wasn’t usually so forward. But then, nothing about this day had quite matched his expectations so far.

It was exciting.

“The inside, see how it’s colored?” Charles asked, lapsing into teaching mode. It would be condescending if it weren’t so arousing.

 _‘For God’s sake, Erik!’_ Charles admonished, his voice strained. A dark red flush appeared on his cheeks.

 _‘I’m sorry’—_ he really, really wasn’t—‘... _continue.’_

Charles huffed and said nothing.

“The inside,” Erik prompted. “It’s colored.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is. Now, chestnut blossoms alternate between being yellow and pink inside.” He motioned to one set of cheery, yellow flowers and to another set of rosy pink. “Notice anything different about these ones?”

“Those ones, no,” Erik answered, eyes tracking the two clusters Charles had brought his attention to. He motioned to the rest of the bush. “Those, on the other hand, yes.”

Charles’ eyes glittered in the sunlight. “What?”

This time, when Erik plucked a flower, Charles didn’t stop him. He bought it up to the side of his face, compared the color in its centre with the cerulean of Charles’ eyes. “They’re blue.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t...”

Charles took his hand, used it to draw the flower to him. “Look closely, Erik. They’re not just blue; they’re white and blue. If ‘do me justice’ is not sign enough, when the flowers turn a never-before-seen shade, a shade of _blue_ —white and blue, my friend, white and blue—there can be no doubt anymore. Not to mention, they’re not sprouting like this, Erik. Last week, every one of these were pink or yellow. With every passing day, more and more of them turn blue.”

His excitement, as always, was infectious. Erik opened his mouth to speak. “You truly believe that—”

Charles gripped his arms before he could finish.

“ _Yes_.” He released a giddy laugh and then gasped, as if the realization was striking him anew. “He’s alive, Erik.”

Erik smiled crookedly at him and shrugged. “Then talk.”

Charles brushed the hair out of his eyes and turned toward the tree. He bit his lip nervously but nodded, more to himself than to Erik.

He took a deep breath.

“Justice,” he began carefully, “You once told me that you were sorry you hadn’t kept your promise, that when I woke up after the Veil was fixed I would be free and because you were still with me once I left, you broke that promise. I want to say I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you. You didn’t just take me from that facility—you saved my life, even after they rescued me. You gave me the one thing I never had: a chance, with my sister and with Erik. You gave me reconciliation, clarity and peace. But most of all, you gave me hope and love.

“That, to me, is freedom, like I hope wherever you are means freedom for you,” he said, lips curling into a thoughtful smile, “I hope you’re safe, I hope you’re happy, I hope you’re chasing some cause for justice out there and I hope you find someone to heed your call.

“I don’t know if you feel in the Fade, if that’s where you even are, but I hope this message gives you strength, that it makes you smile. I don’t know about the people out there or the people from your world, but let me tell you something about me. Everything we went through together demonstrated one thing for me,” Charles whispered, voice soft and reverent.

“You are not simply a formless idea, Justice; _you_ are the virtue to which I aspire.”

Charles tilted his head up to the sky, let the sun soak into his skin, as close to Justice’s light as he could manage. Erik reached for his hand.

“You gave me everything,” admitted Charles and that—that was new.

Erik lifted his eyes from their joint hands to see Charles staring straight at him, a soft expression on his face.

His heart beat faster at the sight.

“You gave us both everything,” Erik echoed, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “ _Everything._ ”

He thought of all they had accomplished together: finalizing the papers for the school, providing a home for no less than twenty rescued mutants—Garrett, Seb, Ava and Belle included—as well as the Brotherhood, creating a safe haven from civilisation’s prying eyes...

He thought of everything they _would_ accomplish together, today and tomorrow, in a year from now, in five, ten.

Charles' eyes beamed with warmth as the thought came to rest between them, beneath the shade of the chestnut tree, whose remaining flowers bloomed bright and blue.

FIN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following translations are just as unbeta'd as this chapter. If you are Russian and/or German and I've ruined your language, I am really sorry. Please let me know the correct translations and I'll change it.
> 
> "Проснись и пой": rise and shine  
> "meine Prinzessin": my princess  
> "Königin": queen  
> "Diener": servant
> 
> I may possibly revisit this universe at some point and write some PWP, because there _was_ this one scene with Charles and Erik in the library that involved wall-slamming, but was cut for essential dialogue, so...
> 
> If you're interested, I might be inclined to finish and post it. ;)
> 
> That aside, thank you so, so much for reading, and I really hope you enjoyed it. ♥


End file.
